#42 1000-Words

TITLE: RING OF FIRE
GENRE: Offbeat suspense


At the moment of his death, Andy Hansen had never felt more alive.

The captain of the Carolina University wrestling squad was enjoying his senior year immensely. With only one loss so far, he was destined for All-America honors at the spring conference championships. This alone would have been enough to sustain his natural high, but adding three turquoise pills and a petite, auburn-haired freshman named Denise Graham into the mix made for one pumped-up wrestler.

Knowing he stood a very good chance of being shirtless that night, Andy wasn’t taking any chances. If he threw himself into an intense chest workout at the gym, his pecs would be suitably swollen, making an ever-so-inviting pillow for Denise’s fragrant head.

As he closed his apartment door, his hand brushed against a thick, blue piece of paper swinging from the knob. Stupid ad, he thought, and wadded it up.

When it crinkled in his fist, he smoothed the ad out again and discovered a small cellophane packet glued to the back. Three capsules rattled around inside. The headline proclaimed “Increase Your Strength! Maximize Your Reps! Enhance Your Performance the All-Natural Way!” RepMax, the attached product, claimed to be organic--free from ephedrine, synephrine and steroids, any of which could get him kicked off the team in a heartbeat. Andy was intrigued; if God made it, what harm could it do?

He shrugged. He was twenty-one, in the best shape of his life, a bonafide wrestling star with a hot new girlfriend in the wings. In a word: indestructible. He pinched out the pills and tossed them back with a swig of water. Might be just bee pollen, but what the hell. He stuffed the free sample coupon into his pocket.

During the light jog to the gym, he felt a tingling in his scalp. The late February air had a crisp, metallic taste. He rocketed through his normal bench press regimen; by his final set, he was already 50 pounds over his all-time max. And he didn’t even feel winded.

Andy noticed something else: his senses were sharper. The dumbbells clanging elsewhere in the gym were deafening. Red and blue rubber mats beneath the equipment swirled together in a wash of purple.

He beckoned a wiry-looking lifter over from the squat rack.

“You mind giving me a spot? I’m going for failure.” The term implied a hefty amount of assistance on the last rep. The spotter nodded.

Each of them slid another plate on the bar. The spotter gave Andy--all 183 pounds of him--a skeptical look.

Andy centered himself on the bench, exhaling ferociously to build up momentum. He grabbed the bar with meaty, gloved hands and jacked it up with an open-throated yowl. He lowered it steadily and envisioned the upcoming night.

He and Denise are entwined in a feverish embrace and she guides his hand around to her back.

One.

Following her lead, he inches his hand up under her sweater and unhooks her bra.

Two.

He removes his shirt, and her hands glide across his sculpted chest.

Three.

She removes her sweater, her bra threatening to fall away at any moment.

Four.

Pulling her closer, he gently tugs the bra out from between them, their bare chests heaving as one.

Five.

Her hand snakes down the outside of his thigh and delicately ventures toward his zipper.

Si-

Andy’s last conscious thought was of the disturbing pop in his chest. His arms flopped to the floor and the bar plummeted down. It bounced once off his ribcage and settled just over his sternum, perfectly balanced. The spotter struggled to lift it, but had no leverage.

The bar began to sink into Andy’s chest, snapping one rib after another. The spotter screamed for help, but the gym was empty. The bar sank further, causing the upper half of Andy’s torso to sit upright from the pressure. It stopped when it met the bench, after it had virtually bisected him. Andy remained inclined, mouth agape, arms dangling.

Seeing the doomed lifter bend at a grotesquely misplaced waist was too much for the spotter, who bolted from the room.

A campus cop named Nick Pappas arrived a few minutes later, accompanied by EMT. The paramedics hefted the bar off Andy, who slumped back and slid off the bench, his empty eyes wide with shock. While they looked the wrestler over, Sergeant Pappas pulled a scrap of paper and a student ID card from Andy’s shorts.

The funeral drew scores of athletes from across all CU’s teams. Still fingering the wrestler’s scrap of paper, now in his own pocket, Nick Pappas was among the mourners. After a Q&A with the rattled spotter revealed nothing, Nick saw the funeral as an opportunity to scrutinize the victim one last time. He didn’t like being in the dark, and Andy’s death was as close as he’d come to a real crime in his eighteen dreary months on the force.

It was an open-casket service. Andy’s mother had insisted her son be laid out in his Carolina-orange wrestling uniform. The autopsy scar presented a challenge, as the tip of it was visible above the neckline of his singlet, but she held firm. The mortician offered a compromise, and when Nick stepped toward the casket, he bit his forefinger to suppress a laugh.

Andy was wearing a dickey. A pristine white turtleneck ended abruptly at the straps and neckline of his tangerine singlet. Set off by his bulging shoulders and biceps, it made Andy appear bookish yet threatening, like a bouncer at a poetry slam. Andy's hands were clasped serenely at his waist, his class ring glinting in the reflection of the church’s stained glass.

After the Pinehaven town police took over the case, Nick followed what little the media doled out in the days after. The county coroner pardoned the anguished spotter by revealing that not only did Andy have upwards of 15mg of the banned herbal stimulant ma huang in his system, but also an undiagnosed aortic dissection. The time of death was deemed to be the moment his aorta tore open, flooding his chest cavity with blood.

Which was, of course, before he dropped the bar.

Nick Pappas’ personal theory was that Andy had been convinced the RepMax was organic, even harmless. Whoever gave him access to such a substance had to be an opportunist of the worst kind, preying on an innocent kid in the name of a quick buck.

Nick tacked the coupon next to Andy’s obituary on the corkboard in his office. Now, finally, he had something to do.