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“Hey everybody, this is Glenn!”

 

“And this is Ben!”

 

“We’re the Fortunato Brothers! And you’re watching another episode of ‘Can You Believe They Bought That Shit?’”

 

TITLE -- THEME MUSIC  

 

“In this episode, we’re nosing in on the Storage Auction scene!”

 

“Yeah, my brother and I took some of the profits we’ve made from our podcast this season and -- as usual -- WE BOUGHT SOME SHIT!”

 

“What’d we get this time, Ben?”

 

“That’s a good question, Glenn! The truth is -- I don’t know! Like everybody in the Storage Auction biz, we bought blind!” 

 

(EXTERIOR SHOT: Drone -- camera pans across the abandoned “ETERNAL STORAGE” building. There are faded egyptian pyramids painted on the storefront, symbolizing eternity -- subtly informing the viewer that they’ll own their junk forever. We can see the cracked asphalt of the old parking lot and the dilapidated condition of the building. Clearly, from the view, we’re in the middle of nowhere.)

 

BEN (in VO): The Eternal Storage facility went out of business about a decade ago, but they never emptied it. Scheduled for demolition, “Eternal” decided to auction off the unclaimed lots, which these sorts of companies do regularly -- it’s even easier now, thanks to COVID. We bought our booty online.

 

(INTERIOR SHOT: Hallway. Rows of storage units, resembling garage doors, run the dusty, broken down hallway. Some are open and empty, several are locked shut. The electric hall lights work by luck alone, creating a dim, prison-like atmosphere. The Buy-It Brothers are “Live” again. Glenn steps into frame.)

 

“But you know us,” Glenn says, smiling his jowly, toothy grin at the camera. “We don’t ever buy a little shit when a lot of shit’s available!”

 

Ben pops in frame, interrupting. “So we bought THREE of these things!”

 

“Well, the fact is we bought an entire lot, which includes these three units, right here next to each other!”

 

“Who knows what wonders we’ll find?”

 

“No one till we open it. So, what do you say? Which one you wanna start with?”

 

“Let’s start with Door Number One!” Ben says, pulling out a tagged key. As he unlocks an ancient, massive padlock that secures a chain to keep the metal “garage door” in place, his brother hogs the camera.

 

“The fun of this style of ‘Blind Buying’ has spawned quite a few tv shows. Who knows what will be inside? Will it have value, or is it just old furniture and clothes? Is it King Tut’s tomb or Al Capone’s vault? If my brother can ever get the lock off, we’ll find out!”

 

Smiling, Ben says, “This shit’s old!” 

 

“So’s your Momma!”

 

Ben snorts, turning the key with great effort. “She’s your Momma, too,” he says, as the lock snaps open with a lethargic clack. “And you know she watches this show.” Ben pulls the chain out of the grating and the two of them squat down to open the sliding door. They couldn’t be less like each other, physically -- Glenn is built like a Snowman and Ben like a String Bean -- although you can see they’re related by face. And sense of humor.

 

The hallway echoes with the sound of scraping, stubborn metal-on-metal force, as if the doorway didn’t fit correctly into its runners, as if it had been pounded out of shape. They get it up almost two feet before it won’t budge another inch. 

 

Ben, his skinny bod already used up, sighs loudly and pants. “Okay, maybe Tut’s tomb was a little easier! Want to try one of the others first?”

 

Glenn is kneeling down, shining his flashlight into the darkness of the storage space. “No,” he says. “I can fit under this -- it doesn’t look like it’s jammed full of stuff -- lemme find the light.”

 

“Go, Indy!” Ben mocks as Glenn slides (barely) under the stuck door. Ben gives a side-eye to the camera and whispers, “Indiana Jones was in better shape than my brother…” He harrumphs sarcastically, indicating his lean frame. “Usually, I’m the one squeezing into tight spaces, but my brother likes being the showman when the camera’s on. What’s going on in there?” he calls.

 

“Hold on -- looking for a light. This is crazy!”

 

“What?”

 

Suddenly, the interior light comes on, flooding the space and leaking through the jammed metal door. “Holy crap! Get in here, Ben -- bring the camera!”

 

(INTERIOR SHOT: Storage Unit One, about the size of a standard one-car garage, unpainted cinder-block walls with an overhead neon light. The space is full of gym equipment, not just stored willy-nilly, but set-up as if to be functional, as if someone worked out here. There’s a cable-crossover on the far end, before the mirrored wall. A squat rack on one side, a series of benches and dumbbells on the other. Dusty and cobwebbed, it hasn’t seen use in a while -- but it once did. Lots of use from its condition.)

 

“Look at this!” Glenn says to the camera, smiling broadly. “This is someone’s gym!”

 

Ben looks around. “Maybe some gym went out of business or something…” 

 

“No. This looks like someone used it. I mean, this stuff is set up, not stored.” He pulls a pair of 20-pound dumbbells from the rack and struggles to do some bicep curls. “Look at me,” Glenn laughs. “I’m Ah-nold!” He puts the dumbbells back on the rack with a clang that echoes through the space. His pear-shaped body couldn’t possibly look less like Schwarzenegger. Weird. 

 

“This is weird,” says Ben.

 

“I know,” laughs Glenn. “Can You Believe We Bought That Shit?” 

 

Even Ben laughs at this. “Another mystery for the Buy-It Brothers!” he says back, smiling. 

 

“Hey, look back here! There’s a door to the next room -- we won’t have to try and open the front slider!”

 

“Thank God,” Ben says, pulling the heavy wad of keys, chains, and rings from the pocket of his cargo shorts and dropping them on the flat bench.  

 

Behind and to the side of the cable crossover -- almost hidden to the eye -- there’s a standard gray industrial door that leads to the next unit. The knob has a keyhole, but as Glenn grabs it, the door breaks off its hinges and falls to the side, as if someone had forced their way through it and tried to put it back in place so no one would notice. 

 

“Fine construction,” Glenn jokes. “No wonder they’ve condemned this building.”

 

“This is all very weird.”

 

Glenn pulls the flashlight from out of his back pocket. “At least I know where the light switches are,” he says, entering the dark room. 

 

“Be careful,” Ben calls, shooting a nervous glance at the camera. He sees the light come on in the next room, but when he doesn’t hear anything more from his brother, he steps toward the door. “Glenn…?”

 

His brother’s voice isn’t scared, exactly, but he certainly sounds concerned. “Ben,” he says, “bring the camera.”

 

(INTERIOR SHOT: Interior of Unit Two. Ben is clumsy, so the camera is jerky as the stand is reset. This room is identical to the other in terms of construction (and lack of color), but it has a different function -- this is living quarters. At one end of the storage unit, along the wall is a simple cot with a nightstand, a lamp, and a small dresser -- a dull, circular floor rug breaks up the cement. On the other wall, a cheap recliner aimed at a crude, old-fashioned entertainment center -- a TV, a VCR and several dozen VHS tapes. Along the back end of the unit, the opposite end, a seatless toilet, a sink, and a showerhead -- there’s a centered floor drain beneath it.)

 

Taking it all in, Ben says, “What the fuck?”

 

Same tone from Glenn. “Can you believe we bought this shit?”

 

“Glenn, what’s goin’ on? Do you think… someone LIVED here?”

 

“Or was KEPT here.”

 

There’s an uncomfortable silence, unusual between these two. To distract himself, Glenn goes to the entertainment center and picks up some of the VHS tapes. He snorts. 

 

“What?” asks Ben, turning the camera to catch Glenn.

 

Glenn holds up the tapes to the camera. “It’s all gay porn,” he says. “And a few bodybuilding competitions.”

 

Even Ben sighs and jokes, “Can you believe we bought that shit?” He chuckles. “Do you think any of this has any value at all?”

 

Glenn shrugs, indicating the tapes. “They’re vintage,” he says. “And look,” he continues, turning the TV on, “TV still works!”

 

The TV comes to life with gay porn, two muscular men in the depths of fucking. Crude and savage, the Buy-It Brothers both turn away. “Oh, Geez… turn it off, man!”

 

But it won’t turn off -- Glenn hits the power button any number of times, but the TV keeps on keeping on. “It won’t turn off,” he says. “Looks like it’s gay porn to infinity!” 

 

Ben side-eyes the camera. 

 

“Unplug it,” he says, which Glenn acknowledges and pulls the plug from the wall -- the TV stops, mercifully. They’re spooked enough.

 

Glenn holds up his hands like he’s won a race. “Ta-dah!” he sings. “Anything in the dresser?” he asks, nodding toward the piece.

 

Ben seems afraid to look, but finally opens the top drawer, which he then immediately closes.

 

“What?”

 

Ben swallows dramatically. “Jockstraps and thongs,” he says. He opens the second drawer. “Underwear and posers,” he says, opening the third. “Spandex shorts and muscle shirts.” He grimly nods. “I am ready to cut our losses and not look in Unit Three.”

 

“Oh, we’re so looking in Unit Three,” Glenn says, crossing to where the doorway would be. Instead, there’s literally a hole in the wall, as if someone had torn the cinderblocks away and made a doorway. Scraps of cement pieces and piles of broken cinderblocks still litter the floor. Someone had clearly meant to fix the damage -- there are a couple of loose bags of cement mix amid the rubble -- but clearly nothing had been done, just dust and destruction with a layer of time. “I mean, obviously, someone wanted in there very badly.”

 

“Where the hell is the door?” asks Ben, moving the camera’s tripod to a new location. “What is going on around here?”

 

“Well, it’s pretty full in here,” Glenn says from the doorway. “But I can slide down the wall and get the lights okay.”

 

Again, after a couple of seconds, the lights come on, though this bulb isn’t quite as good, blinking and fizzing as Ben, carrying the camera, enters.

 

(INTERIOR SHOT: Unit Three. A slightly smaller room than the other two -- maybe half the width -- filled with over a dozen wooden pallets loaded with beverage cases, wrapped tightly in heavy industrial plastic. Some are haphazardly stacked on top of others -- each pallet has six layers of product. They are dusty, resembling forgotten furniture after a hasty move or dinosaur carcasses after a meteor shower.)

 

Ben looks into the camera. “The mystery deepens,” he says.

 

Glenn pulls his knife from the Leatherman attached to his belt and cuts into the heavy plastic wrapping on one of the pallets. “Let’s see what they were hoarding,” he says, pulling out a plastic sports drink bottle, gray with red and gold lettering. “CYCLE ONE,” he reads, shrugging. “You ever heard of it?” 

 

“No.” Ben pulls out his phone instinctively to search it, but there’s no coverage inside. “Fucking cinderblocks,” he mumbles. 

 

Meanwhile, Glenn cracks open the plastic bottle and chugs it on down. 

 

“Glenn!” Ben hollers when he looks up. “What are you doing?” 

 

“What?” Glenn says, tossing the empty bottle away. “It’s just a sports drink! I didn’t see an expiration on it -- it was good!” He turns to the camera and adds, “Sadly, it hasn’t fermented.”

 

“I can’t believe you just drank that!” Ben protests. “You don’t know anything about it!”

 

“Oh, for the love of God, Ben! Give it up!”

 

Ben shakes it off. “I’m sorry, bro,” he says. “This whole place has got me a little spooked, is all. This is very weird.” 

 

Glenn shrugs dramatically. “What? Some guy who used to own a gym loses it all and instead of being homeless and on the streets…”

 

“...he chooses to live in a storage facility?” Ben finishes. “With his collection of porn, thongs, and sports drinks? No, that doesn’t sound weird at all.”

 

Glenn snorts and begins counting the pallets. “Whatever,” he says. “Ready, math guy?”

 

Ben opens his calculator app. “Ready!” he says.

 

Glenn counts. “Each pallet has ten cases per layer and each is six layers high.”

 

“Sixty cases!” Ben announces. “I didn’t even need the calculator for that!”

 

Glenn laughs. “Twenty-four bottles per case means…?”

 

“Fourteen-hundred forty bottles per pallet.”

 

He counts quickly again. “Twenty pallets…?”

 

“Means we own a shit-ton of this stuff.”

 

Glenn smiles toward the camera. “I love math,” he says.

 

“What are we gonna do with twenty-eight thousand, eight-hundred bottles of old sports drink?”

 

“Twenty-eight thousand, seven ninety-nine,” Glenn chuckles, tossing his empty bottle dramatically over his shoulder, where it clunks emptilly around in the cinderblock space. 

 

“That’s gonna eat into our profit margins,” Ben says, shaking his head, sliding his phone back into his pocket. 

 

“Ben, even if we sell it for a buck a bottle, we still make a shit-ton more than we spent. Plus the gym equipment…”

 

“...and the vintage porn.”

 

Glenn smiles. “And the vintage porn -- we’ll still come out ahead. That it happens to be weird gives us a story to tell, doesn’t it? That’s why we have this camera… and the show…”

 

They both turn to the camera and smile. “Can You Believe We Bought This Shit?” Ben asks dryly. 

 

“Okay,” Glenn says, taking charge like he usually does, “we’ll need the Pallet Jack -- we didn’t bring that, did we? -- but we have room in the Hauler to fit all this stuff.” As he talks, he steps back into the middle unit-- the living area -- Ben follows dutifully, taking the camera along. “I doubt we’re gonna want to keep much of this stuff -- I guess the TV works tho, right? And who knows? Maybe there IS a market for vintage porn.” He laughs and walks into the first unit, the one with the gym equipment. “I don’t know how we’re gonna get this stuff outta here -- maybe the guys who buy it can haul it. I don’t know…”

 

Suddenly, he jumps up and grabs the pull-up bar mounted on the top of the cable crossover. Ben is suddenly watching his middle-aged, rugby-thick, out-of-shape brother doing pull-ups -- exercising! “What are you doing?” Ben asks, already laughing.

 

“Pull-ups!” Glenn says breathlessly as he struggles to do a third. He drops heavily onto his feet. “We own a gym now,” he says to his skinny-fat brother. “The Fortunato Brothers Fitness Center! Maybe it’s a sign we should get these sad-ass bods back in shape?” 

 

Ben laughs. “You feelin’ okay?”

 

“I feel great!” Glenn says. “Seriously, I feel fucking GREAT! Ever since I had that…”

 

He stops suddenly and looks away, toward the third unit. A devilish smile crosses his face and he exits with purpose back into the other rooms. 

 

“Glenn, what are you doing? GLENN!”

 

Ben gives a look toward the camera and is about to go after his brother when Glenn reappears in the broken doorway, holding several bottles of CYCLE ONE. “This shit…” he starts to say.

 

Ben immediately protests, holding his hands up. “Our profit margin!”

 

Glenn tosses a bottle with an easy lob to his brother, but Ben -- never an athlete -- bobbles and drops it. The bottle rolls under the metal gate they’d opened into the hallway beyond. “There goes our profit margin,” Glenn jokes, opening another bottle. As he speaks, he gestures with it. “Why don’t you go grab that bottle? I should’ve known better than to toss it to you.” He slugs down half his new bottle in one gulp, easily. 

 

Ben’s tone is serious. “I think you should ease up on that stuff,” he says, making his way toward the metal gate. “You don’t know what’s in it.”

 

“It’s a sports drink.” Glenn waves him off. “It’s just sugar water.”

 

He attempts another set of pull-ups as Ben squats down to go under the door. He’s got a little over two-feet of clearance but he’s reluctant to press his chest to the floor, all that dust and dirt he’d been able to ignore before, when the mystery had captivated him. Now there’s less enthusiasm to follow the rules -- like the game OPERATION, where you shouldn’t touch the sides…

 

Ben’s shoulder whaps the bottom of the metal grate as he rises in the hallway. There is a grinding, loud, metallic shriek and the grate slams solidly onto the cement floor. 

 

“Oh, shit,” Ben mumbles. 

 

He hears Glenn from inside, slightly muffled. “What happened?”

 

“I must’ve jostled it with my shoulder,” Ben says to the door, speaking a little more loudly than usual, to be heard through the closed door. “That’s why I didn’t make the Limbo Team.”

 

No laugh. Damn.

 

“Okay, let’s heft it back up again!”

 

Ben grabs the handles on his side -- and he can hear Glenn trying to pull the chain on his -- but the door doesn’t budge.  

 

“Fuck -- AGAIN!”

 

They try -- even though Ben worries about his back, he throws himself into it -- and fails. The door stays closed.

 

“Fuck,” Ben chants. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

“Well, let’s try one of the other doors,” Glenn suggests from inside. “You have the keys, right?”

 

Ben reaches down to his pockets -- empty? Where…?

 

Oh, shit! He’d taken the keys out of his pocket and put them on the bench -- inside the unit!

 

“Oh, shit!”

 

“What?”

 

“They’re in there!” Ben shouted, slapping the metal door. “They’re in THERE! I took them out of my pocket when I was fumbling with all the camera equipment! They’re on the bench.”

 

He doesn’t hear Glenn’s sighing exhale, but he’s certain that’s what’s happening -- his brother is collecting his wits -- it’s what he always does when he’s angry. 

 

“Okay,” Glenn says through the grate. “Is the crowbar in the truck?”

 

“I don’t know,” Ben answers. “I’ll have to check. I don’t think so. I think we took it out when we were emptying from that last job.”

 

“It’s okay,” Glenn says. “We’re gonna need the Pallet Jack anyway. Okay, you head to the Workshop and get the crowbar, the Pallet Jack, any kind of hack saw we might have if we gotta cut those chains…”

 

“Glenn, the Workshop is almost a hundred miles away!”

 

“Well, we don’t have much choice -- unless you’re strong enough to tear through these metal grates with your bare hands, we’re gonna need tools. And the tools are in the Workshop…”

 

“Which is a hundred miles away!”

 

Glenn laughs. “Well, I’m not going anywhere! So you might as well get to it… unless you don’t have the truck keys?”

 

“They’re in the truck.”

 

He can hear Glenn sigh. “You just leave keys everywhere…”

 

Ben doesn’t laugh. “You’re hysterical,” he says. “Look, Glenn, I feel bad enough…”

 

“It’s not a big deal,” his brother says through the metal grate. “It’s just a couple hours. I have plenty to do -- I have games on my phone and shit -- don’t worry. Hey, I can always work out and watch vintage porn, right?”

 

That his brother, trapped because of Ben’s own foolishness, would work so hard to make jokes shows Ben how much Glenn cares. Ben can’t help but smile. “Yeah, I guess,” he says. “I’m sorry, Glenn.”

 

“It’s just gonna be a couple hours -- and we’ll get a good story out of it. Don’t worry, Ben, it’s all good. Now go get the tools -- I’m done talking through a garage door. Frankly, I feel like working out.”

 

“Don’t drink any more of that shit!”

 

“Too late!”

 

For some reason, as much as anything else, that lights a fire in Ben’s pants. He can’t shake his uneasy feeling about that stupid sports drink -- he’s sure he’s heard of it before. On the floor against the far wall sits the bottle he’d come out here for -- without much consideration, he picks it up off the floor and puts it in the side pocket of his cargo shorts (where the keys had been). 

 

Ben hurries down the stairs and exits the building -- this time smart enough to block the door with a cinderblock, so it won’t lock by accident behind him. 

 

The keys are in the truck -- thank God for small favors! -- but the crowbar is not. There’s not a helpful tool in the bed. (They’d taken the toolbox out to create room for all the loot they were gonna haul from this Buy-It score!) Just one stupid thing after the next -- and here they are now, Glenn locked in a unit with vintage porn! 

 

So it would be REALLY stupid if something happened to me now, Ben thinks, driving a little too old-lady like. But it’s better than getting pulled over, or having an accident, or any of the other myriad horror stories he imagines happening as he drives the nearly hundred miles to their Workshop while his brother is trapped. 

 

“I just got here!” he texts when he arrives at the Workshop, nearly two hours later -- the text isn’t delivered.

 

He tries to shrug it off, shutting the door of the truck -- the one shrink-wrapped with their Buy-It Brothers logo -- and enters their warehouse (their “Workshop”) -- the one sporting that same logo over cartoon-versions of he and Glenn. (Ben thought they looked a little too much like Laurel and Hardy, but no one knew that reference anymore.) With haste, he gathers the things he’ll need, the crowbar, the hacksaw -- he has to locate the Pallet Jack. He’s wasting so much time on it, he considers leaving it behind. Fortunately, just as he’s thinking that, he trips over it. (It’s mostly hidden beneath a hastily discarded tarp.)

 

It takes some little effort to lift it up into the bed of the truck -- lifting stuff is more his brother’s kind of thing -- but he finally does it, breathing heavily as he rolls the jack deeper into the bed near the cab and straps it in. He’s sweating a little -- and thirsty. Without realizing it, his hand touches the bottle still stashed in his pocket. 

 

The CYCLE ONE.

 

He can’t resist. Though he knows his priority is getting back and rescuing his brother, Ben takes a moment to fire up his desktop and do some internet snooping, to satisfy his curiosity (or his paranoia). Cycle One -- there it is -- a sports drink that was all the rage twenty years ago. Internet rumors claim it was the real deal, adding insane amounts of masculine muscle and power, but there were side effects: dangerously increased libido, loss of sexual inhibition, loss of individuality. Crazy internet bullshit -- still, there are dozens of flexing testimonials, young men eager to show off their “transformations.” All of them looking a tiny bit… zealous, perhaps?

 

Another article links Cycle One to a Justice Club Super-Villain, a hyper-muscled bodybuilder by the punny name of King Rex. The pic that accompanies this article shows an impossibly muscled man with a beard transforming a kneeling Superion, the Earth’s most powerful superhero, and turning him into Rex’s worshipful gay slave. The article claims the “secret ingredient” in Cycle One is King Rex’s magical ejaculate. 

 

A deeper dive: coincidently, upon the disappearance of this King Rex into the Multiverse, supplies of Cycle One became limited overnight -- and precious. Several would-be cults formed around the protection -- and distribution -- of this suddenly valuable resource. People went to great lengths to horde the stuff -- vaults, fallout shelters, armed-guards at storage units…

 

Ben surfaces from his rabbit hole with the realization of what he and his brother have stumbled upon. In this instance, knowledge hasn’t seemed to give him any power at all -- other than to realize there’s danger, which he’s already suspected. 

 

Thanks, knowledge.

 

Hurriedly, Ben gets back to the truck -- leaving the bottle of Cycle One on his desk -- realizing he’s wasted almost twenty minutes online, and heads the ninety-some-odd miles back to the storage units. He wants to floor it and speed the entire way, but he fears getting pulled over, or getting in an accident, or any of the other myriad nightmares that would end with his brother being forever trapped. 

 

“Almost there,” he texts at a red light -- the text isn’t delivered.

 

Damn cinder-blocks -- they give little hope.

 

He leaves the main road for the access road, the access road for the side road, the side road for the private drive, until finally, the abandoned ETERNAL STORAGE building comes into view, across the cracked and weed-filled parking lot. Apparently, this is all to be torn down to create an Amazon Warehouse. The Amazons replace the Eternals -- sounds like a bad superhero movie -- Ben can’t help but chuckle, despite the situation. A nerd at heart.

 

He parks next to the door he’d left jammed open with the cinderblock and hurries back inside, grabbing the crowbar out of the truck bed on his way. He bounds up the stairs to the second floor -- as fast as his skinny, awkward body can “bound” anyway -- less like a gazelle and more like a clumsy giraffe with a few extra knees -- and lopes down the hall to their lot. It’s been just a little over five-and-a-half hours, and his brother wasn’t in immediate danger -- (he certainly wasn’t gonna go thirsty) -- still, Ben is worried. 

 

From halfway down the hall he can hear it. Right up next to the stuck door it’s impossible to miss: clanging weights, grunts and groans -- his brother is working out!

 

“Glenn?” he calls, slapping the metal door. “Glenn, you OK?”

 

“Ben?” he hears, then the thud of a barbell being dropped. The voice is closer to the door. “You’re back already? I still gotta do deadlifts.”

 

“You’re hysterical,” Ben says, smiling with relief -- his brother isn’t dead. “Are you OK?”

 

He can hear Glenn’s laughter. “WAY better than OK. Bro, this stuff is AMAZING, this CYCLE ONE shit! We’ve struck gold!”

 

“Glenn…”

 

“A buck a bottle? Fuck that. A THOUSAND bucks a bottle! For this…? Hell yeah, they’ll pay it.”

 

“Glenn, I’ve been doing some research on it, the Cycle One, and…”

 

“I don’t care what the Internet says right now, Bro! Let’s just get this fucking door open.”

 

“Um… Okay, I have the crowbar!”

 

“Great! Let’s see if you can get the bottom up a little bit.”

 

Ben jams the crowbar beneath the door -- he’s expecting resistance, but the flat end of the bar simply slides under. Lifting the curled end, Ben slides a piece of broken cinder block beneath to act as a fulcrum. When he attempts to raise the door, the metal dents, lifting a small section up about an inch.

 

When Ben removes the crowbar, he sees his brother stick his fat fingers through the opening from the other side. “I’m almost free!” Glenn says and laughs. Then, he says, “Hey!” like he’s had an idea. “Make another one of those dents about two feet to your left. I got an idea!”

 

Ben shrugs -- “Okay…” -- and slides to his left. Again, the crowbar easily goes under the metal lip. Ben uses the same piece of cinder block and creates another hand-sized dent in the base of the sliding door -- the screech of the metal is almost uncomfortable. 

 

Glenn is saying, “Perfect… perfect,” from the other side of the door. “Okay, let’s give it a try!”

 

“What?”

 

“Let’s try to lift it! Grab the handle out there!”

 

“Glenn, we can’t lift this…”

 

“I told you -- I’m fresh! I haven’t done deadlifts, yet.”

 

Bending over rather than squatting, Ben grabs the handle in the center of the roll-up metal door. He’s indulging his brother -- there’s no way they’re moving this door -- so he doesn’t give it his all. 

 

So he’s surprised when, on his brother’s count of “Three!” the door actually jerks up a foot or so -- Ben nearly loses his balance. 

 

“That’s better,” says Ben’s brother. “I can get a better grip on it now. Hold on a sec…” Ben can hear the sounds of drinking from inside and the clink clunk of an empty plastic bottle as it’s casually tossed away. He burps. “Okay,” he says, again gripping the base of the metal -- Ben can see his sneakers beneath the door. “Let’s do this. Grab on!”

 

Ben grabs the door handle a little more seriously this time, squatting opposite his brother. 

 

“One. Two… THREE!”

 

They both throw energy into the movement, but the door doesn’t budge. 

 

“No!” Glenn yells. “AGAIN!”

 

A little -- it moves a little -- but nothing that’s gonna rescue anybody anytime soon.

 

“Fuck this… FUCK THIS!” Glenn yells, then Ben can hear him mumble. “Just need a little more. Just a little more…” Again, the sound of drinking, the empty clunk of a thrown bottle. “Fuck this. Let’s get this fucking thing!”

 

They both heave.

 

It moves… slightly!

 

“MORE!”

 

And they both strain.

 

Then, unexpectedly and suddenly enough to surprise Ben, the door doesn’t slide up so much as it gives in to the pressure and folds, shrieking a metallic screech like a tin can collapsing. 

 

The force throws Ben off balance and he trips over the crowbar, slamming into the cinderblock wall on the opposite side of the hall. So hard, it knocks the wind from him -- and from the way his head slams back into the brick, he knows he’s about to lose consciousness, too. 

 

The image he’s left with: his brother. His brother! Not the teddy-bear, snowman-shaped sibling he’s known for forty years -- not unless his brother is the Hulk and Ben has never figured it out. Standing there in the doorway, arms over his head pushing the door up further, Glenn is massive -- his muscles are impossible! Thick and heavy, but not ripped and “cut” like a bodybuilder in competition. Glenn’s lines are curvaceous, not tight, his flabby tummy has become a “roid-gut”, big, curved lines, round muscle bellies, bloated and swollen -- he wears electric blue posing trunks and a spandex half-shirt that doesn’t reach the bottom of his bulbous pecs, exposing his thick nipples. His biceps are easily as big as his head, maybe bigger while flexed like this -- Glenn’s breathless in his joy, in his win, in his show of power. Look at the size of him!

 

Ben can see his brother is fighting a hard-on in the tiny, shiny posers he barely wears as he flexes his triumph at ripping the door from its track -- he’s so masculine, but what he wears is so… flowery. Feminine. He flexes a most-muscular, popping his traps and his pecs -- just like the Hulk used to on the old TV show when they were kids, fantasizing about being so big. And then -- helplessly -- Ben finally passes out, lost in confusion and darkness.

 

Only certain that he’s too late.

 

*********************************************************************************

 

Chock!

 

That’s the sound he wakes to, the heavy stone stacking of brick.

 

Chock!

 

Or cinderblocks…

 

Ben opens his eyes tentatively, taking a moment to process where he is. Although he’s leaning against the wall, there are pallets of CYCLE ONE all around him -- he must be in Unit Three! Why…?

 

Chock!

 

What the fuck is that? As he stirs, rising to investigate, he discovers there’s a chain wrapped several times around his ankle -- padlocked on! -- connecting him to the pallet. He screams.

 

“Glenn! GLENN!”

 

“Oh, you’re awake,” he hears from somewhere across the unit, out of sight. “And here I was trying to be quiet…”

 

Chock!

 

“What the fuck is going on?”

 

Glenn laughs. “Good tv.”

 

“What? Glenn, I’m chained to this pallet.”

 

“Yeah, I know -- calm down. Freakin’ out is not gonna help you, bro. It’ll be easier if you think of it as an Escape Room -- the intent IS for you to get out, after all.”

 

Chock!

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

There’s a heavy sigh. “Can you stand up, at least?” his brother asks. “So we can talk face to face.”

 

Ben stands, the chain uncomfortably tight around his ankle, his headache pounding. The pallets are just under six feet high (stacked with cases of Cycle One -- perhaps the last cases of Cycle One), and Ben can see over the top. 

 

Not that that lessens the horror.

 

His brother -- his massively muscled brother -- Ben still can’t adjust to the change -- is resealing the hole in the cinderblock wall between units two and three, using the broken pieces from before. He spreads a sloppy layer of cement with his bare hands and then drops a cinderblock into it.

 

Chock!

 

He’s rebuilt the wall only a little higher than his chest, so Ben can still see Glenn’s pecs, traps and shoulders -- and of course, his arms. (He’s so big -- it’s just not possible.) 

 

“What are you doing?” Ben asks, barely keeping the fear from his voice. 

 

“Okay, again -- calm down,” Glenn said patronizingly, spreading cement. “Freaking out will just waste your time. It’s easy to get out of here -- I’m even gonna tell you how.”

 

Chock!

 

“Glenn, what the fuck…?”

 

Glenn reaches through the opening with his muscular arm -- he’s holding a flashlight and a set of keys (he’s getting cement on them from his fingers). He drops them on the floor, well on the other side of the room. “These are the keys to your chains,” he says, pulling his arm back and peeking through the gap. “And my torch, which is a literary allusion -- forget it. Anyway, I figure after drinking a dozen bottles or so, you’ll be big enough to drag that pallet over here and get these keys.”

 

“WHAT?!?”

 

“I told ya, it’s good tv.”

 

Chock!

 

“See, Ben,” Glenn says as he continues re-building the wall, “I knew you wouldn’t drink it voluntarily. No doubt you ran home and researched it and found all the reasons NOT to drink it -- that’s so like you -- but I say when you come across a magic muscle potion, you drink it! That’s the difference between you and me.”

 

Chock!

 

“Would you please stop doing that?”

 

Glenn doesn’t stop -- he continues. “But then I thought, what if he’s his normal smart-ass self? What if he just tears through the heavy plastic and empties the pallet? That’d make it pretty easy to drag across the room, right? So I decided to create another little obstacle for you. Even if you cheat on the pallet (and personally, I don’t think you’re strong enough to tear through the industrial plastic), you still gotta get through this wall. But I figure, after you drink a case, you’ll do it with ease. Look what I did to that fuckin’ roll-up door!” He laughs. “It’s so fucking awesome, Bro!”

 

“Glenn… please…”

 

Chock!

 

“I considered simply force-feeding you, but that’s kind of an overused trope, isn’t it? This way makes more compelling drama. Did you see the camera over by the sliding door?”

 

Ben looks to his left and sees the camera on its tripod atop a pallet of CYCLE ONE, aimed at him, filming his dilemma. 

 

Good TV...

 

“I filmed my own transformation,” Glenn adds. “Well, not so solid at the beginning, but I have a cum-shot at the end that’ll blow you out of the water! And my Scanty Fashion Show will get us a ton of views!”

 

“What?”

 

“Trust me, Ben -- this stuff enhances EVERYTHING!”

 

“Glenn, please don’t do this.”

 

“You’ll thank me, bro. That I know -- you just need the right motivation. String bean like you… it’s what you’ve always dreamed of. Big muscles. Feels good. No work. Right up your alley.”

 

Chock!

 

The wall is almost complete -- just a small gap at the top. Enough to maybe get a grip on…

 

Ben pulls on the chain -- he’s securely in place. This is all a little too melodramatic for him. Would his brother actually abandon him here and let him die?

 

What the fuck?

 

“For the love of God, Glenn!” he shouts as the last cinderblock wedges into place. “Stop!”

 

“Get drinking,” he hears his brother say, his voice muffled. “You can be out in an hour! I’ll be over here working out and modeling posers -- haha!” 

 

“Glenn! GLENN!”

 

But Glenn doesn’t answer. All Ben hears is the sounds of gay porn -- vintage gay porn -- the moaning and the raw need permeating the cement wall. Beyond that, the clang of weights in the first unit -- Glenn is at it again. 

 

Ben screams out of frustration more than anything else, knowing no one can hear him -- they’re in the middle of nowhere. He’s trapped -- TRAPPED! And completely at the mercy of his brother’s dark sense of 19th century drama. 

 

He sits against the wall in a fetal position, crying. Why does this have to be such a difficult choice? At the heart, Glenn is right -- he hates being skinny -- he hates being String Bean. 

 

Muscle Zombies searching for hidden stashes of Cycle One…

 

Transformations. 

 

He still seems like the same Glenn. (Except maybe the chaining his brother around the ankle part…) Just a fuck-ton bigger -- more masculine. Sexier.

 

He holds the bottle in his hand -- firm, hard plastic -- unemotional, cold. What if you held a magic muscle-growth potion in your hands? Would you drink it?

 

Knowing what it would do? (He hears his brother’s obsessive training.)

 

Knowing what it would change? (He hears the vintage porn.)

 

He looks at the camera and flies it the bird. Fuck you, good TV.

 

Finally, long minutes later, the sound of him cracking the bottle echoes around Unit Three. 

 

Cycle One - promo4.JPG

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2 minutes ago, Absman420 said:

Well, this is actually Part THREE! I wrote the original story, CYCLE ONE in 2001, and its thematic sequel, CYCLE ONE: TARGET TWO a couple of years later. You can find them here: https://www.gayspiralstories.com/series/show/433259

 

cheers. when will the next part featuring glenn and ben, i really want to see ben grow, also i wouldnt mind sampling cycle one, if only they were real, i am a lot like ben in that regard, i just wouldnt have hesitated and instead done the exact thing as glenn

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Just now, richard18 said:

i just wouldnt have hesitated and instead done the exact thing as glenn

I would like to think I'd be more thoughtful, like Ben, but the fact of the matter is I'd drink it down so fast, I'd swallow a lot of air. Of all my transformational devices, I think CYCLE ONE is one I'd actually do. Guys seem to remain themselves, they just become obsessed with lifting and sex. Sounds good to me.

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Just now, Absman420 said:

I would like to think I'd be more thoughtful, like Ben, but the fact of the matter is I'd drink it down so fast, I'd swallow a lot of air. Of all my transformational devices, I think CYCLE ONE is one I'd actually do. Guys seem to remain themselves, they just become obsessed with lifting and sex. Sounds good to me.

you can say that again, if something like that comes in reality, hit me up

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2 minutes ago, Absman420 said:

I would like to think I'd be more thoughtful, like Ben, but the fact of the matter is I'd drink it down so fast, I'd swallow a lot of air. Of all my transformational devices, I think CYCLE ONE is one I'd actually do. Guys seem to remain themselves, they just become obsessed with lifting and sex. Sounds good to me.

also i think due to the fact ben is the thinner one he will have some insane abs with hus hugeness, like my werewolf kirito but human, here is the pic of him 

kirito_werewolf_avatar_remake_with_zy_s_hair_by_richard16-d9b7mhf (1).jpg

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