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Transcript/Statement below:

Statement number 0130806, Statement of Marie Balandin, regarding her new gym in the summer of 2013. Statement recorded to tape June 29th, 2017 by Sophie Sandler, archival assistant at the Usher Foundation. 

Statement begins.  

I actually used to be a powerlifter. Most people don’t even know what that means, and half the time the people who think they know what it means have it mixed up with bodybuilding instead. I get it, it’s not like either of the sports are exactly popular, and there’s a lot of parts that are similar. You spend a lot of time in the gym, and prior to a competition you take several meticulously planned weeks getting your body ready for the day you step on stage. 

The main difference is, with powerlifting that means getting ready to lift the most weight on squat, bench, and deadlift that you possibly can. You need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to be mindful of fatigue. With bodybuilding, it’s basically a beauty pageant with people who are very hungry, very sparkly, and very spray tanned. Don’t let the guys hear you say that though, a lot of them don’t like the truth being said that loud. 

In a lot of ways, powerlifting was perfect. My whole life I’d always been a bit… preoccupied… with what my body looked like, but for a little while there, the focus on what my body looked like was second to what my body could do. Food was a tool I used to grow into the strongest version of myself I could possibly be. I loved it. There was such a deep feeling of success and pride that came with dedicating yourself toward a goal and watching everything you did pay off. Sure there were some bumps along the way, but the difference between me five years into powerlifting and me before I’d ever touched a barbell was night and day. I was 20kg heavier, I was over three times stronger, and I was a lot happier. 

The worst part is, I don’t really know what happened. It felt both gradual and immediate. One day I was standing at work and I noticed a weird pressure on my back. There was a fold that appeared under my bra whenever I twisted, near the border of my mid-lower back muscles, my lats. It went away with the bra off, so I told myself it was just muscle growth, a consequence of my skin being pressed into an unforgiving piece of fabric. Then the fold stayed on with the bra off. Muscles don’t fold. 

Another day I sat down to do leg extensions, and I noticed a patch of fat on the inside of my knee. I got so distracted by it that I fully lost count of what rep I was on, and ended my set early. Next set it took everything I had in me to keep looking at the wall in front of me, instead of down at my thigh. I tried to think back to what it looked like last month, or the month before. It must have been smaller then, or different then, otherwise I would’ve seen it. I would’ve done something. 

Later, as I was resting between sets of bench, I overheard a couple of guys complaining about their tricep visibility. I checked my arm when I had the chance. My triceps looked like a fraction of their size, and seemed even smaller due to the patch of fat stored over them. How had I never noticed that either? I needed to start paying more attention.

I began coming up with checks, looking and measuring and pinching at those spots on my back, my thighs, my triceps. Most times when I looked, I found another spot to add to the list for next time. It’s a hard realization to come to, that every part of your body is wrong, but I’m glad I finally got there. Once I figured it out, I couldn’t imagine not knowing the truth. 

I knew what I needed to do. I had tried to lose weight on and off before I started lifting, but I never really had the nutritional knowledge or commitment to stick to it. But now from all those powerlifting competitions I knew what motivated me. I needed a concrete, time-bound goal. I needed a stage .  

I signed up for my first bodybuilding competition in the bikini division, and started my first proper diet that day. To distract myself from the strength loss and motivate myself through the hunger, I did my checks. 

As the weeks went on, I started passing some of them, but despite passing them, something still felt wrong. I modified the rules, hoping that the new checks would be a better benchmark. They weren’t. I was hungry, both for food and for change. Part of me was looking forward to the judges. It would be a panel of professionals telling me how my body looked, I wouldn’t have to rely on myself who obviously had a hard time picking up on basic flaws. 

After 20 weeks of dieting, I stepped on stage as a bikini competitor. There’s a bunch of different bodybuilding categories, each with different ideal body type criteria. I initially picked bikini for my first try since I was pretty sure I was too small for any of the other divisions, but the judges thought otherwise. Apparently I was too big, had too much upper body focus for bikini, and I was too lean. They didn’t want to see any striations or veins, and wanted more curves. They told me I should stay to watch the women’s bodybuilding division, the one that focuses most on maximal muscle size and rewards striations, and consider trying that category next time. 

I stuck around, I didn’t have anything better to do. The women who came on stage next took my breath away. This competition was untested, which is legalese for “whatever you want to take or inject, we won't ask and you don’t have to tell”. The powerlifting federation I’d been a part of before was tested, and my gym was pretty anti-drug, so while I’d seen pictures of enhanced women online, I’d never actually seen the effects in person. 

I looked at the sharply cut lines of muscle on every competitor and thought back to the guys at my gym who were complaining about their tricep visibility. The arms I saw on on stage were even bigger than theirs, and there was so little fat on them that you could see a distinct striped feathery pattern down the back. I thought about my own arms and had to fight back a wince.   

I left that competition with several new checks, and new set of google searches to perform. I began my first cycle the next week. It was strange. I should’ve been more prepared for the voice drop than I was. Now I didn’t even need to look in the mirror or down at myself to be startled by the body I was piloting around, I just had to talk. I got used to it eventually, it was a mark of me becoming who I needed to be. 

The cocktail of gear I took was ever-changing, and as I kept finding things that were wrong with me I kept adding new chemicals to deal with them. I was getting a lot stronger, and I was getting a lot bigger, but it wasn’t enough. 

I was leaner than I used to be too, even as the weight on the scale went up. I threw everything into my training. I couldn’t waste the drugs, I couldn’t risk the weight gained being too much of the wrong type. I needed to carve my body by hand into the shape I wanted it to be. It was unfortunate I didn’t really seem to know what shape that was. 

I ended up getting implants too. It’s funny, I remember people telling me that women shouldn’t bench press, since it’ll shrink your chest. That still remains one of the more ridiculous things I’d ever heard. Does anyone ever tell you squats will shrink your legs, or curls will shrink your arms? Back in my powerlifting days, I could bench over 100kg and my cup size was the largest it’d ever been. 

Dieting down for that first bikini competition was weird, I just watched them disappear. Another thing in the mirror that didn’t line up with what I expected to see. The stuff I was taking didn’t exactly help on that front, keeping me lean, having all those ‘androgenizing’ effects. So I went in and got it fixed, back to the size I used to be when I was natural and bulked. At least that change worked mostly the way I planned it to, I think. 

There were more competitions, of course there were. I needed the evaluation. I needed the other sets of eyes on me. Somehow, starting in 2010, I started winning them. I got my pro card in 2011, kept placing pretty well in 2012, all in the bodybuilding division of course. I lost a bit of faith in the judges as they handed me those trophies. To truly earn them, I should’ve looked better. 

Life was a strictly regimented haze. The only real changes were the gyms I’d go to. I always liked trying out new gyms, exploring new equipment, people, locations. Sometimes I’d find a new brand of machine that lined things up to hit your muscles in a slightly better way. At those gyms I’d stick around for longer. Sometimes I’d spend a week or two talking to a guy and then decide I didn’t need to be attending that gym anymore. 

Earlier this spring, I was getting a bit tired of the awful leg press at my current gym and of the way Bradley Coleman insisted on ”correcting” my form on anything where I outlifted him. I started intentionally wandering the gym between sets, trying look more occupied and less conversationally available. That led me to actually spend some time looking at the bulletin board, which I typically just ignored on the way in. On the edge of the board sat an impressively crisp sheet of paper secured with a silver pin. Below a sharply rendered barbell was the phrase “your perfect body awaits”, with a bunch of those little paper tabs you can rip off with a phone number and address. 

One or two tabs had already been pulled, but I grabbed another. I made sure to take all my equipment out of my locker and back to my flat after that session, before I’d even called the number on the paper. When I rung it up that afternoon to ask about their membership options and hours, I was answered by a voice that must’ve been a couple octaves deeper than mine, which at this point actually says something.  With an appointment set for the following evening, I got out the food scale for some post-workout greek yogurt with protein powder. 

The new gym was mostly on my way home from work, a nice little spot in Aberdeen, which was a step up from the previous place I’d been going. I was a bit surprised I hadn’t seen anything about it before when looking places up, but if their marketing approach was just ‘sticking unclear advertisements on bulletin boards’, I guess it made sense it’d flown under my radar. 

My heart clenched a bit as I stepped inside. It smelled like iron. It reminded me of my old powerlifting gym, which had all metal plates, and fully metal dumbbells. The machines of my more recent gyms were also metal-plastic contraptions, of course, but they never quite managed to carry the same rust-tinged bite as the older iron. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it. 

The momentary nostalgia was not enough to distract me from the guy standing behind the desk. He was absolutely massive, would’ve dwarfed any of the Olympia competitors even in their offseasons. I was honestly impressed his heart was still beating. I greeted him with a smile, and as he returned it and stood up, I realized he had actually been sitting the whole time. He must’ve been over 7 feet tall. I could not imagine the amount of food this guy would need to stay functional. His loose-fitting clothes covered the finer details of his physique, but even without the clear definition, something about the way he stood and the way his arms laid at his sides felt… different than what I was used to seeing. Synthol maybe? If he was cool maybe I’d ask him about his thoughts on it later.  

I confirmed I was indeed Marie from the phone, and I braced myself for the mutual attempt to crush each other’s hand that is customary when greeting a guy who lifts. I was prepared for the pressure, but extremely unprepared for the sensation of something in his hand shifting as I squeezed. Alarmed, I let go somewhat abruptly, but he just let out a guttural laugh and asked me if I’d been training my forearms lately. 

I actually had been paying more attention to them over the past couple months, and the conversation from there pivoted into training. He pointedly asked me what supplements I take, and I raised my eyebrows and asked him what he took. He told me it was cutting edge, and looked kind of proud of himself as he said it. I laid out my current cycle and future plans, as well as a couple exercise selection considerations. He nodded, and asked me how my progress toward my perfect body had been so far. 

I couldn’t help myself, I laughed. My abs were still sore from the previous day and it grounded me as I gasped between each sound that crashed out of my chest. I was pretty sure it was laughter. The guy’s face split into a grin, and he said he thought I’d be a great fit. He said he unfortunately had a meeting coming up that he had to leave for, but that we could talk about some additional members-only options later. With a wide gesture at the room, he told me to have at it, and then walked off into what I assume was the locker room. 

I didn’t want to bother him in there, so I decided to kept my bag with me throughout my workout. I was hitting legs today so that was easier than having to go back and forth to a locker to get or put back my belt, lifting straps, flat shoes, heel elevated shoes, or knee sleeves, between different exercises anyway. 

As I loaded up a barbell for RDLs, I got a bit annoyed at the lack of any collars or clips to keep the weights on the bar. If I shifted wrong, they’d all start sliding right off. Good thing I was pretty steady. After finishing up my sets of those, I moved on to trying out a couple of their machines. 

The resistance curves on most of them were pretty good, nice and even difficulty for the whole range of motion. The padding on everything was exceptionally thin. I could feel my shoulders bruising on the hack squat, the backs of my heels on leg curls, and the tops of my quads on the seated calf raises. I checked the mirror in between sets of course, and there were a couple of disorienting seconds where my attention was caught by the irritated red marks across my skin before it was caught by my physique. 

The guy who ran the gym was pretty elusive. I didn’t run into him for the rest of that day, and decided to just shower at home instead of try to break into the locked locker room. Later that evening I realized I hadn’t even gotten his name. 

As the week passed by, I still didn’t see him. I’d gotten a pair of keys before he left, so I had access to everything still. Nobody else was around either. The lack of conversation was a bit sad, but the lack of lines for any equipment made up for it. I also had to worry less about stealth when doing my checks, so I wasn’t complaining. 

On Wednesday, halfway through an arm day, I heard the door open. Thinking it must be the owner, I spent the last couple reps of tricep extensions psyching myself up to actually try to figure out what his deal was. After I let the cable stack down, I turned my head to see two men in overalls walk up to the front desk, and then pivot to look at me. They told me they had a package for Jared, and asked me if I’d seen him. I faintly remembered that the owner had a J on his jacket, and told them that he was probably around somewhere? 

They said they needed someone to sign for the package, and that they couldn’t leave until someone did. To get them out of there, I told them I’d sign for it, and as soon as they left I just put it on the desk of presumably Jared. 

It was probably a restock or an update of whatever he took. I was tempted to just look, but didn’t think I could be subtle enough about it. Since I’m the only other person around, I’d be the only suspect of tampering. When I came back the next day, it was gone, so I guess whatever exchange took place was completed successfully. I needed to ask him about it the next time I saw him. 

The days blurred together again, and were broken up momentarily when I took a week down to Glasgow to visit my sister Melissa. I found a gym near her place I could go to before she got up in the morning, drank a lot of secret protein shakes made with whey and water, and tried to keep the fitness discussion to a minimum. She’s less weird about it than our mum, who “can’t stand what I’ve done to myself”, but I could tell she was thinking things she wouldn’t say. 

The day I got back, I was extremely ready to channel everything I tried not to think about over the past week into a leg day. When I entered the gym, I was surprised to see someone else over by the benches. He introduced himself as Ross. His physique spoke of years of experience, and his stringer tank spoke of a fear of not looking big enough in sleeves.

We talked a bit that day, and I saw him reevaluate me in real time when I took my pump cover off. Over the course of the next week, I confirmed my suspicion that he competed too, Men’s Physique. When he told me that, he also told me that he had started up his first cycle recently. I asked him if he’d felt any side effects yet, acne or temper or anything, and he said he felt pretty in the clear. Ross asked me how I felt about any side effects I’d experienced, and if I thought they were worth it. Again, I couldn’t help the laughter that bled from my chest. 

It was nice having somewhat of a gym partner again, and someone who was at a similar level of training experience, albeit new to being enhanced. He had so much joy about it. It was a little uncanny. 

While we had exchanged numbers to coordinate gym times, I was a bit surprised when Ross called me out of the blue one night. He started stammering some story at me about things with too many arms living in the locker room that were telling him to join them. Apparently Jared was there, and looked wrong, and said Ross wasn’t ready, or something like that. It sounded like he was telling me a dream he had. It sounded like a dream I wanted. 

I asked for more details about what they looked like. I asked for clarification on Jared’s physique, since I had always been curious. I asked what time he went specifically. He answered. 

I never heard from Ross again. 

The next day, at that same time, I opened the door to the gym. A few seconds later, Jared came out of the locker room, arms and legs bared in a cutoff and shorts. I began mentally mapping out the expected lines of muscles on his body and noting their disruptions. His quads had six parts instead of the usual visible three, and his hamstrings were a complex series of muscle fibers I’d never before seen. Something else shifted in his legs as he walked. Irregular shapes pressed up from under the skin of his arms and torso too, interrupting the smooth flow of the striations around them. He looked massive, sharp, unlike anything I’d ever seen. I told him if that was the perfect body I signed up for, I’d like to start making more progress toward it now. 

Jared grinned, a movement that caused something in his cheek to pulse up, crack, and then shift up and back to his ear. He told me that rats were a pretty good source for a beginner, and told me about a couple good locations to check out. I shook his hand again, feeling an extra finger splinter off from his index as our hands made contact, and headed off.

I don’t know why I decided to stop here on the way. I think I wanted this version of me stored somewhere, like a before photograph. I’m tired of everything feeling like a before photograph. It’s time for an after. 

Statement ends. 

Weird story about this one. Elias Bouchard from the Magnus Institute sent this statement to us a week or so back, saying we should hold onto it for their Head Archivist Jonathan Sims, who was apparently going to stop by the Foundation soon. This morning Elias called us and said that there’d been some changes in plans and Jon wouldn’t be ‘needing’ the statement anymore, and that we should just record it here. Not sure what all that was about, but the recording is done now I guess. Maybe we should send them this tape? Send them a copy? 

Anyway, we looked into some of the details a bit. Seems like Marie ended up progressing from rats to sheep a couple weeks after this statement was recorded, based on a police report from August 23, 2013. Can’t find anything about the gym, but I did find a couple pictures of Marie, both at some powerlifting and bodybuilding competitions. Even more than any changes to her body, what got me was the change in her expression. She was properly beaming in those earlier pictures, and in the later ones her smile somehow looked both angry and sad. I wonder which smile she’s wearing now, if she can wear one at all.

Chapter Text

Statement number 0130807, statement of Ross Davenport, given August 7th 2013.

So I had to find a new gym. It was a shame, really. I loved my old place . It had great equipment, and the guys there were some of my best mates, but… it wasn’t entirely my own decision. Matt, the guy who ran the place, was a proudly proclaimed lifetime natural, and wanted everyone under his gym’s roof to be the same. His hatred for performance enhancing drugs made sense though, I guess. Matt was always more on the ‘healthy’ side of things, but his partner would do and take anything he could to be the biggest guy in the room. When he had a heart attack a couple of years back, Matt blamed the steroids. Since then, you get seen with a needle or pill bottle that’s not a recognised supplement, and you’re outta there.

Still, I didn’t leave because I got caught or anything like that. I hadn’t even started when I left. I just felt guilty. Like it was an admission of failure. Eleven years I’d been going, all natural, and objectively, I was doing pretty well. I was almost guaranteed a place on the podium in local tested bodybuilding competitions, but it wasn’t enough. See, I always relied on my conditioning in those competitions. A lot of judges will wave off you coming in a bit smaller than the other guys if you also come in leaner. I wasn’t winning because I actually had big muscles, I was winning because I was really good at dieting. Sure, I looked ok enough with my shirt off, but the second I put on regular clothes I felt like I disappeared. Even if I went on a dedicated bulk to add size and did everything perfectly, I knew as a natural I could never get as big as I wanted.

So, I spent a while combing forums, talking to a couple of my buddies, and then hit up a reputable enough website for my first cycle. Safety is relative with these things of course, but I didn’t want to be reckless with it. I started with something pretty moderate. I even made sure I got a full check-up from my doctor beforehand , though obviously I didn’t mention why. Everything came back fine, so all that was left was to find a new gym where nobody would mind me taking them.

This was harder than it should have been, mostly because of my own standards. Plenty of places had an ‘official’ policy banning drugs onsite and just didn’t enforce it. To me, though, the whole point of moving gyms was that I didn’t want to have to hide like a criminal, or pretend to think what I was doing was wrong . It was my body that I had to live in, I didn’t need other people policing what I did with it.  

Eventually I found a place , weirdly enough, in the Yellow Pages. Online searches hadn’t shown anywhere promising near my home on the outskirts of Aberdeen, so I thought I might as well try the phone book. As you’d expect, most of the listings just pointed me towards their websites, but I spotted a small, square ad box in the lower left corner. It was text only, and read, “Your perfect body is here. Become all you can be.” Followed by a landline number and an address about five minutes walk from me. So I gave them a call.

The voice that answered was rough and spoke in the sort of English accent that usually gets my hackles up, but when I asked him what the gym’s policy on performance enhancers was, he just laughed, and said that if it helped me “perfect myself” then it was more than welcome. I arranged to swing by the following day and check the place out.

From the outside the gym wasn’t much to look at. Just the faded outline of a dumbbell on a grimy window, and the words “Weights and Cardio” just about readable over the door. I realised that I actually passed this place pretty regularly, I’d just always assumed it was out of business.

The door was open, though, so I went inside. It was a hot day, but the air in the reception was cool, tinged with that familiar scent of sweat, and something else I couldn’t quite identify. There wasn’t anyone behind the desk, and the computer didn’t look like it had been turned on all day. I was about to call out, see if I could get somebody’s attention, when I heard the door to the changing rooms open, and someone stepped out.

The man who stood there was, without a doubt, the biggest guy I had ever seen, and that’s saying a lot coming from me. He had to hunch down to fit through the doorway, and was almost twice as wide as I was. Most of his body was covered in a loose tracksuit, and I could see clear stitch marks where it had been enlarged for him. Embroidered onto the chest was the letter ‘J’.

I couldn’t look away. On top of his enormous size, he had the sort of cheekbones and jawline I’d kill for. He smiled when I stammered out a hello, and asked if I was Ross from the phone. Sure, I said, and he immediately launched into all sorts of questions about my workout split, physique goals, what safety measures I had for my first cycle, that sort of thing. None of it was unexpected. As I answered, I tried to think of some things to ask him, since he clearly knew his stuff.

But then he started asking me a few slightly more personal questions: why I’d become a bodybuilder, how it made me feel, what parts of myself I hated. It felt a bit… invasive, but I answered honestly. I didn’t spend much time thinking about questions after that. Anyways, he seemed satisfied with what I said , turning around and gesturing for me to follow as he headed in to show me around.

The gym itself was good, but nothing special . Couple of power racks, some okay enough machines, cables. It actually didn’t have much in the way of cardio equipment, but I never got all that excited about ellipticals, so it wasn’t a problem. There was also quite a lot of old-fashioned gymnastics equipment: parallel beams, vaulting horses, high bars, all that sort of thing. It was a huge room, and to be honest, part of me just assumed that they were there to use up some of the space. It certainly had everything I needed, although I did wonder why we were the only ones in there.

It was the changing room that really struck me as odd, though. There was just the one: apparently unisex, though I doubted any women were members. It was decent size, and had plenty of showers, good water pressure, everything you needed. It all seemed perfectly normal, except for one thing.

The lockers were absolutely enormous . They came right up to the ceiling, which was easily twelve foot from the floor, and must have been a good two or three feet wide. Each had what looked to be a unique lock, and only a few of them had keys in.

My guide explained that every member of the gym had their own locker, and kept it as long as they were a member. I asked what happened when all the lockers were taken and he just shrugged. “No new members,” he said. When he shrugged, the fabric of his hoodie moved in such an odd way. It was fascinating. I was definitely going to keep an eye out for him in the gym, so I could get a proper look at him.

I walked over to one of the lockers with the key still in it, number 31, and pulled it out. I looked back at him, and he nodded. The locker was just as big inside as I’d thought, and went back about five feet into the wall. Forget a workout bag, I could have stored my entire wardrobe in that thing.

After that, I headed back into the reception, and the guy took down my details, I signed a few forms and, just like that, I was a member. He told me to keep the key, and explained that he preferred to have membership fees paid in cash. That didn’t surprise me. I got the feeling that there were a few things about the place that wouldn’t pass any sort of official audit.

Still, it suited me perfectly, so I had no interest in causing them any sort of trouble. I gave him a big thumbs up, and he nodded, turned and headed out the doors, off down the street. It was a bit abrupt, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure he was all there, if you know what I mean, so I didn’t think too much of it. I did kick myself, though, as I realised I hadn’t actually got his name, so ‘J’ would have to do.

With J gone, it seemed like I was the only one there, so I got changed, and got on with my workout. There was nobody around to ask for a spot, which was a bit unfortunate. I liked the couple extra reps a spotter could help you get out past failure, not to mention the little secret competition of trying to beat whatever they did during their set. With no one around, I was both more cautious and less motivated. When I went to bench, I realized that this gym had no safety arms for any of the benches or power racks. Weird, since the racks and benches all had the holes for them to go into. 

I kept expecting someone else to come in, but even after an hour and a half I was still alone. Occasionally I heard a noise from the changing rooms that I would have sworn was someone coming in, but there was no-one. Eventually, I showered, changed back, and headed home for a less-than-exciting dinner of chicken and beans.

The next day was the same, and the one after that. No matter when I went, the place was always empty, with no sign of J or anybody else. I wondered if somehow I’d been tricked into paying to use an abandoned gym or something, but it was well maintained and really clean, so someone was looking after it. In fact, thinking about it, I’d say it might have been the cleanest gym I’d ever used, although at the time I thought that was because I was the only one using it.

About five days into my time there, I finally met someone else. Her name was Marie Balandin, and she seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to see her. Apparently she had been using the gym for about two months and had, like me, thought she was the only one. She’d been off to see her sister down in Glasgow for a week, and was a bit shocked I’d turned up in her absence. We got to talking, though, and got on pretty well. I mentioned the lack of safeties, and she offered to spot me. I thought it was more a formality than anything, since my bench was probably over twice her bodyweight. I decided to fake getting stuck with a rep to see what level of spotting I could actually expect. When she effortlessly yanked the barbell off my chest and reracked it, it shut me right up.

As Marie warmed up for her own sets, she shed the oversized t-shirt she entered the gym in. Suddenly the ease with which she moved that bar made a lot more sense. Whatever she was taking, she was a lot further along than me. Not going to lie, I was impressed, if not a little intimidated.

Still, there was a camaraderie that came from being the only two people in that weird place, and it didn’t take long for us to become good friends, swapping training advice and theories about what the deal was with J, whose real name, she claimed, was Jared.

There was one other advantage to knowing Marie was around – it helped me ignore the sounds from the locker room. The occasional thumps and creaks. I could just write it off as her being a bit clumsy. Even when I hadn’t seen her come in.

Marie was apparently quite a big deal in some of the international women’s bodybuilding competitions. I’d never followed them as closely as the men’s , but she showed me a few of her trophies once. The way she trained, though, it was intense, driven. More driven than I’d expect from someone with so many wins under her belt. She’d spend most of the time between sets flexing in the mirror with an increasing look of disgust on her face. Then she’d just hit the next set even harder somehow, pushing herself to or beyond failure on everything. For all the awards her body had gotten her, it kind of seemed to me like she wanted to destroy it.

I didn’t really think about it too much, though, as my cycle was starting to show results, and I was spending plenty of time in front of the mirror myself. It wasn’t enough, though. I knew it wasn’t enough. I knew I was going to have to start up another cycle as soon as my body had recovered from this one. Maybe even sooner.

I don’t know how it would have ended if I hadn’t lost my phone. I don’t have much of a social life, so I didn’t notice it was gone until I was getting ready for bed. I must've forgotten to grab it after I showered . I wouldn’t have minded waiting until the next day, but it had my training diary on it, and I always spent ten minutes reviewing the day and planning the next one before bed. It was a small ritual, but an important one, and given it was just down the road, I figured I might as well go and see if the gym was still open. Since no-one ever seemed to be around, I figured, maybe no-one locked it overnight.

So at about half past eleven last Wednesday night, I found myself gently pushing open the door to my gym. It wasn’t locked, just as I guessed, and everything inside seemed quiet. I headed through into the changing room, and there was my phone, where it had fallen in my locker. I grabbed it, and was just about to leave, when I heard movement coming from the gym itself, and nearly jumped out of my skin.

I should have left. I should have turned right around and marched out of that place, but instead I felt a… rage building inside me. Whoever was in there, it was almost midnight, how dare they come in sneaking around like that, trying to give me a heart attack! I set my face hard, and walked through, preparing to give Marie, or whoever it was, a piece of my mind.

The lights in the gym were off, but I could see movement over near the gymnastics equipment, someone swinging back and forth on the parallel bars. It was a smooth, rhythmic motion, down and around and up and over, around and over, up and down. Sometimes the movement flew up, releasing the bars for a moment, before deftly catching them on the way down. There was no sound as I got closer, apart from the faint slap of hands gripping and releasing the wood of the beams. If it was Marie, I’d never seen her doing anything like this before. I walked over, and turned on the overhead lights.

It was not Marie, swinging round and about on the bars. Marie only had two arms. Marie had legs. And Marie had a head. The thing that swung and flipped and twirled around the bars was nothing like Marie, though its flesh looked human enough. It did have a smile, though, stitched… right in the centre of its torso.

I screamed so hard I tore something in my throat. I don’t know if it heard me. I don’t know if it even had ears. But it wasn’t alone, and the other things in that place did hear me, because as I ran back and out through the changing rooms, all the lockers were opening. What came climbing out of them had once been people, I’m sure of that, and they called to me, offering to help ‘perfect’ me. To help me achieve my ideal body.

J was there, standing his full height. A distended, jagged body bared in all its twisted grandeur, and he shook his head in frustration. He said something, I think, but I couldn’t make it out. It might have been “too soon”.

I try to remember some of them in detail, the confusion of limbs and joints and muscles, but all I can remember is the happy, joyful way they called to me. Told me that the pain was worth it. It makes me sick that a small, sharp part of me wishes I’d stayed to listen.

I never went back. I called Marie and told her what happened, but she didn’t believe me. At least, I hope she didn’t. Because if she did, then some of the questions she asked make very worried for her indeed.

MARTIN:

The, um... the supplemental materials that should go with this statement, providing more details on addresses, names, and stuff, seems to be missing, so we don’t have any way of tracking down the gym, or finding out the name the business might be operating under. Not without a 2013 copy of the Aberdeen Yellow Pages. A bit of relief, in some ways. I tried to contact Mr. Davenport about it, and did get through, but he told me to... um, he... he... wishes no further contact with the Institute.

Melanie looked into Marie Balandin, though. In 2011 and 2012, she did really well in several IFBB competitions, but it looks like she disappeared around the time of this statement. No missing persons report was ever filed, but there’s no record of her anywhere after that.

The last official mention seems to be a police report filed on August 23rd, 2013, which lists her as a ‘person of interest’ in a series of animal mutilations on a farm about five miles west of Aberdeen. A bunch of sheep were found dead, with their femurs removed. Look, I, I know we’re not meant to speculate in these bits, but... well, I just... I wonder what she was planning to do with them.

There. Well, that’s, er... That’s it.

Statement ends.