"Sorry, Sam, I didn't catch that. Did you have something to tell me?" Zeke commented.
Sam didn't respond. He couldn't respond. What would he say? Zeke had a body that was everything Sam had dreamed of becoming, an imposing, dominating ideal. Every muscle, every inch of his frame held a gentle but firm definition that radiated a smooth strength from every swell, every curve, every side. He was sitting on a bench of his own, bending slightly as he did curls with one arm, but he still easily loomed over Sam. The position only seemed to compact his frame, making him look even more intimidating and powerful as his forearm tensed, his payload casually lifted, crested with a firmly bulging bicep, then slowly lowered back down.
But he wasn't just using a dumbbell. He wasn't even using a curling bar. Sam realized with a pang of dread that Zeke was curling, with one hand, a loaded barbell- one that looked a lot like the same weight Sam had been using moments before for his bench press. Zeke's curls were hardly giving him trouble, either; every rep he did caused him to do little more than exhale, barely a grunt, at almost no visible strain.
"Mmmm, getting so big..." He purred with contentment.
"Zeke... what happened?" Sam asked incredulously.
"What do you mean?" Zeke replied in an eerily calm, smooth voice. He spoke with with a relaxed and casual nature he typically didn't even use in everyday life- he could have been smoking a joint, or waking from a deep slumber.
"You're... big. Bigger than me. Bigger than everyone, anyone I've ever known."
"That's ridiculous," Zeke replied with a chuckling smile. "Brian and Greg are both bigger than I am."
Suddenly, Sam became aware of the panting, clanging noises on either side of Zeke, and saw he was flanked by Brian and Greg... though not as Sam had ever seen them. Each of them was a meter larger than Zeke, and somehow even more developed; whereas Zeke's enormous build had still kept his proportions fair and balanced, Brian and Greg were nothing short of well-toned monsters. Brian was doing his own bench presses on a super-sized gym pew, but his bar was easily twice as long as the Olympic standard, and considerably more thick. Greg, meanwhile, was doing leg lifts on a proportionately massive machine. Every time Greg's massive legs went up, the soles of his feet leveled with Sam's face; and every time it hit its rest at the bottom, a sharp CLANG! filled the air, with a tiny tremor running out alongside it.
"Hey, Zeke, can you pass me another plate? I'm done with my warm-ups," Greg rumbled with a final CLANG! as he dropped his calves and released pressure on his thighs. His legs were as thick as tree trunks, and as such were prominently hale.
"Sure thing, Greg," Zeke answered, unceremoniously dropping his curling weight with a massive CLUNK on the rubber floor. He turned around, grabbed hold of a plate the size of a dinner table, and pivoted his torso in the other direction to give it to Greg. Suddenly, the weight was passing -over- Sam's head. The iron disc was every bit as wide in diameter as Sam was tall, and completely overshadowed him as it passed.
Sam was reeling. Zeke was bigger than he was? Brian and Greg were bigger than him? He was supposed to be the Big Deal. That was his job. Heck, that *was* him. But now he was the shortest of his flat-mates, no contest. Sam could only look at Zeke's absent-minded face from on high, never feeling more vulnerable or weak in his life.
"This isn't right," Sam murmured softly in disbelief. "None of this is. It can't be..."
"Sure it can," Zeke continued as he sat down, picked up his bar with his other arm, and started curling again, oblivious to Sam's reaction. "You always said so. I'm a runt. A shrimp. The smallest in our house. As a matter of fact... I'm the smallest person in the gym."
No sooner had Zeke finished talking than the noise of the trio expanded to all around him, the clamor of weights and voices of their lifters now all around him. He was in the center of a gym full of lifters just as huge as his three friends. These were the group that had been admiring him just a few minutes ago. Now they bantered, talk, groaned, shouted encouragement, but none of them were looking at him. They didn't even seem to know he existed. Sam watched with awe as a bodybuilder that had to be twenty-foot tall flex in a full-length mirror, when suddenly a thigh enveloped his vision- a lithe, towering athlete and his mate had passed through, nearly body-checking Sam. They paid him no notice- they'd been completely absorbed in their conversation and lumbered away, laughing.
All of a sudden, Sam became aware of a constant, tumultuous rumble trembling through the floor from the direction of the gym entrance. He turned around just in time to see a mob of new behemoths enter the already-crowded gym, but as he stared up in frightened wonder at them-
SMACK. He hadn't been paying attention, and had been hit in the head with a gym duffel bag like a cloth torpedo. The force knocked him on the ground... then he was lost, being pushed to and fro by over-sized beefcakes in a stampeding forest of legs.
Amidst the throng, Sam heard Zeke's sonorous timbre resonate through the gym air around him.
"But if I'm the smallest.. then what does that make you, Sam?"
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