Chapter 13 (1/2)
Daniel was covered in sweat, breathing heavily, and had a beautiful woman above him screaming his name.
”PUSH HARDER DANIEL! TEN MORE REPS TO GO! MOVE YOUR LAZY ASS!” Abby bellowed in his ear.
Dan felt like crying. He had been bewitched, entrapped, fooled by a pretty smile and a bubbly demeanour. Abby the Actor, that should have been how she introduced herself. At least then he would have had fair warning. This was Hell. Dan was in Hell.
And the worst part? He was paying for the privilege.
”PUSH YOU PANSY! NO MORE WHINING! GIVE IT YOUR ALL!” Cruel, accurate words were shouted at him as he strained against a workout machine. It was built like something out of a late-night infomercial; a panoply of fitness, with fifty different settings and a dozen different routines. It sat in Abigail's guest-room-turned-exercise-space, where Dan showed up three times per week to be brutally murdered.
Margaret had been extraordinarily smug about the arrangement, muttering under her breath about Dan needing friends his age like the nagging nagger that she was. It was true, unfortunately. Dan had few friends in his old life, and all of them had been made during his school years. With no school to attend, and no coworkers to mingle with, he had been sadly limited in his social options. That he counted a former lab mouse as one of his closest friends really should have been a clue about Dan's state of mind.
Speaking of Merrill, she cheered Dan on in her own special mousy way, squeaking at him from her spot on the handle of Abigail's not-a-Bowflex. Abby, like anyone who had a functioning heart, adored Merrill, and happily allowed the unusually fluffy mouse to hang around for moral support.
”ONE MORE! HURRY UP! MY GRANDMA CAN DO THIS FASTER THAN YOU!”
It was just about the only moral support Dan would get. He had a suspicion as to why Abby did not have many clients, and it had nothing to do with body mods.
He groaned as he completed his set. The exercise had a name, probably, but he was too exhausted to remember it. His focus lay entirely on the fact that he was done for the day. This had been his third session. He'd managed a full week without quitting.
He'd probably eat a cake or something to celebrate, tonight.
”You did it! Yay!” Abby clapped her hands together and cheered, suddenly sweet and innocent again. Not a single ounce of fierceness lingered in her voice. She bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet, the spitting image of a young woman excited for her friend. A clever facade. Dan could see that now.
Dan had never asked the girl about her own powers. He wondered if there was some sort of split-personality upgrade available. It would certainly explain things. His keen intuition told him it was best to keep that theory to himself though.
”You're doing great so far, Dan,” Abigail praised, giving him a hearty slap on the back. He stumbled forward wearily, and collapsed onto the matted floor.
She laughed as he groaned. ”Keep this up, and you'll get in shape in no time at all!”
”I hate everything,” Dan stated to the ceiling. Merrill parkoured her way down the workout machine and onto Dan's chest, sniffing at his face. He brushed at her soft fur, and quietly contemplated never getting up again.
But Abby could only allow a sweaty man to lounge on her floor for so long, so Dan soon found himself in her shower, surrounded by bright pink tile, scented soap and floofy loofahs. A third time in this situation had not eased the oddity of using someone else's facilities, but Dan was slowly overcoming his culture shock. Apparently, because gyms were not all that popular these days, Dan exercising at the home of his personal trainer, using her personal equipment, and bathing in her personal bathroom, was not seen at all as weird or taboo.
He emerged from the bathroom in fresh clothes and smelling like a daisy. Abby waited for him in her living area, seated primly upon her couch with Merrill balanced on her knee. Dan took the recliner with a quiet grunt, stoically ignoring the stifled giggles coming from across the room.
The focus of his attention was the massive screen built into the wall. At over eighty inches, it dwarfed Dan's old apartment television. Tiny crystals lined the borders of the screen, projecting the image onto the wall through some bizarre form of super-science. Dan hadn't the slightest clue how it worked, but it was the sort of thing he expected to see in a big budget science fiction film, rather than the home of an out-of-work personal trainer.
Speakers hummed quietly along in the background, concealed in the walls. A news program played along the screen, but the volume hovered at just above silent. Even still, Dan could feel soft reverberations pulsing through the room. After a week of waffling, Dan finally worked up his courage.
”Hey Abby, can I ask you something kind of personal?” he said, breaking the comfortable atmosphere.
She shrugged. ”Sure.”
”How can you afford this setup?” Dan gestured towards the television, then around the room. ”I looked it up. This stuff costs tens of thousands of dollars, and there's only one company that even sells them.”
He hoped her answer wouldn't be some vague placation that hinted at a sinister past. He really got enough of that dealing with Marcus. That didn't sound like the Abigail that he knew, though. He expected some sort of simple explanation, accompanied by eye rolls and gentle laughter. Maybe she got it on sale because she knew a guy who knew a guy. Maybe she was renting it out from some oddball Blockbuster knockoff that was somehow successful in this universe. Maybe she built it herself. That would be neat.
He wasn't expecting her to laugh.
”Has Aunt Marge never mentioned anything about my side of the family?” she asked him curiously.
”She said that you were her niece. Not really much else.” Dan answered unsurely.
”Why? What am I missing? What's so funny?” His voice grew higher pitched and more indignant as Abby dissolved into laughter.
”Th-the tech company, pfft, that sells my television. Daniel, what was it called?” she managed to stutter out inbetween bouts of snickering.
Dan's forehead creased in thought. ”It was... Summerset, I think.”
Abby stared at him expectantly.
Dan stared right back.
”Dan, what's my last name?” she asked sweetly.
”Abigail Summ-oh.” Dan blinked. ”So you're the heiress to a massive tech company, then?”
She gave a tinkling laugh. ”My grandfather founded the company and my brother is the majority shareholder. I've got no interest in the family business, so I mostly do my own thing, but there are obviously perks.”
Dan eyed her entertainment center. ”Obviously. But why be a personal trainer?”
Abby shrugged carelessly. ”Why not?”
”Well... you could just get a cushy job at Summerset, right? Wouldn't that be easier?” Dan asked incredulously. If there was anything that television dramas had taught him, it was that an heiress to a mega-corp could easily acquire a cushy day job.
”It's not about what's easy,” Abby retorted. ”I enjoy motivating people to better themselves, so that's what I do. Maybe in a year or two I'll enjoy something else, and I'll switch to that.”
Dan frowned. ”Just like that?”
”Again, why not? I used to want to be a vet. That's what I went to college for, but surgery squicked me out.” Abby shrugged again. ”It's about living a full life! Do what you love, and all that jazz!”