Her Body of Muscle: Winter vs the Nanobots

Chapter 12

Blinking her eyes open, Winter found herself on-top of her bed shivering.  Unbelievable, the heat in the apartment was out again.  Throwing her arms around herself for warmth, squeezing soft breasts and piercingly alert nipples against forearms, she rolled out of bed.  Sparks of pain coursed through her legs before dashing up her body.  The swell of soreness crested and sledge-hammered down between her ears.  A painful headache clouded her eyesight and she squeezed her eyes shut in agony.  Winter hadn't felt like this since that first workout years ago.

Gingerly, she stepped between the still strewn treasure on the bedroom floor and grabbed her baggiest, warmest, sweatpants.  Squirming out of the tight blue jeans, she breathed a sigh of relief as the soft fabric loosely hung from her hips.  Despite it all she smiled, thankful she had ordered the XXXL men's sweats, perfect lounge gear.  At least I think ahead on some things, she thought with a smile.  Winter grabbed the matching sweatshirt, even for her impressive body, the superfluous fabric was multiple sizes too big.

She sat back down on her bed and hunched over.  Resembling more a grey pumpkin of cloth than a woman.  What do I do with all this?  She thought, resting elbows on her knees and chin in her palms scanning the wealth scattered on the floor.  Her head pounded.  Two years of taxing, constantly varied, progressive overloading weight training, but whatever she had done to her body and soul yesterday had resulted in a new level of crippling soreness.

With a groan she headed to the bathroom.  She didn't have to turn on the lights.  Winter felt the bags under her eyes, her sweat mangled hair in limp bunches.  She needed coffee.

With carefully plotted meal prepping refined over several years of trial and error, coffee remained one of the rare extravagant daily rituals.  And today it beckoned more pleadingly than usual.  She licked her lips in eagerness as she creaked and shuffled her aching body to the kitchen.

Scooping beans into the coffee grinder, she flicked it on and subconsciously ground her teeth excitedly as it chomped and swirled to life.  Oh... her head.  Felt like she was being ground to bits alongside the beans.  The smell though, it was a light at the end of the tunnel.  Winter scooped the grounds into the one serving drip coffee pot.

Extending her forearms onto the counter she slouched her head into her outstretched arms carrying her head between the abundant cloth surrounding her forearms. She punched her butt back, stretching her torso as her spine cracked and popped.  Humming at the pleasure of full extension, she let the soft drip and smell of the coffee revive her focus.

Winter pulled the oversized sweatshirt sleeves over her hands to shield the skin from the burning hot mug.  Taking her coffee from the pot she shuffled to her folding table that, along with the infamous oak cabinet, served as the only dining room fixture.  She nearly fell into the plastic folding chair which creaked and snapped under her weight.  Having lost nearly forty pounds when she first started lifting, especially over the last year she had steadily gained back nearly half of it in muscle.  What a joke, the idea that lifting weights made a woman "big."  It had taken a year of research into everything from precise dietary needs, to rest management and progressive overloading for Winter to have made the progress she had.  And it still seemed like a shadow of what was possible.  Every morning evaluating poses in the mirror, she longed to feel the pump of full exertion, the journey of putting on more strength and muscle.  She practically ached to keep adding to her powerful frame but it was at times frustratingly slow.  Each ounce of muscle fiber was a symbol of her resolve, an excruciating labor of conviction.

Relaxing for the first time in the last 24 hours, she was just grateful today was her scheduled rest day.  She had never needed it more.  As her mind settled, she felt a growing lump of guilt and dread creeping through her gut.  As the emotions coalesced into a knot, she felt them wind up her throat materializing in a pasty dry anxiety in her mouth.  She felt horrible.  What had she done?