Hope it's not too late, but here's a little something I came up with at the gym this morning. jon Morning Routine J. M. Strother I work for a rather enlightened company. It has a gym on site, complete with an Olympic sized swimming pool and a jacuzzi. It's a nice fringe benny, considering the price fitness centers charge these days. And it's a lot more convenient, being right on site and being open 24 hours a day. I used to try and work out right after work. But the gym is pretty crowded then (it's the most popular time according to the attendant). Plus I soon leaned that I really just wanted to go home at the end of the day and found it harder and harder to get up the energy to face the weights and treadmill after a hard day at the office. So I dropped it for a while. A recent glance at the scale told me that dropping the gym was a mistake. So I decided to try working out before the start of the day instead. It was hard to force myself up at 5am, but I found a predawn workout much preferable to a late afternoon one. And as a side bonus the gym is virtually abandoned at 6am. It's usually just me and the attendant. It's so abandoned, in fact, that sometimes it gets kind of creepy. Occasionally I seem to catch some movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I look, no one is there. There is the occasional odd noise too. The sound of a door closing. The isolated clank of metal as if someone just set down the weights. It got really creepy last week. I was in the shower and I could swear that someone was out in the gym using the weight machines. I could definitely hear the rhythmic clank clank of someone pressing iron. But when I dressed and went back out into the gym to leave, no one was there. It was dead still. As I went through the anteroom I asked Charlie, the attendant, who else was in the gym. He shook his head. Just you, bud. I started to object, but then shrugged and went on to work. The next day I could have sworn I saw the door to the women's locker room closing just as I got there. I went to the men's and changed out, but found no one in the gym when I came back out. As I was about to go on and start my routine I heard a distinct splash from the pool. It is on the other side of the pass-through locker rooms, so I went back the way I had come and stepped out on the deck to the pool. No one was there. There was only the gentle lapping of the water in the side gutters. Very odd. I don't use the pool myself. I'm not a good swimmer, and would never dream of swimming alone. Since I'm usually the only one there in the early morning the pool is out of the question for me. In a way I was relieved that no one was swimming. I would have been sort of worried about them the whole time. Face it, swimming solo is dangerous. But no one was there, so I went back to the gym for my work out. Just as I reentered the gym the door to the anteroom was closing and I smiled. So that was it. Charlie was trying to spook me, the nasty trickster. So, we got ghosts? I jibbed on the way out. He just grinned. 'Gotcha!', I thought. On Thursday last I was just getting ready to strip for my shower when I heard a splash out in the pool again. This time I was closer and there could be no doubt. I quit unlacing my sneakers and dashed to the pool entrance to catch the culprit red handed or wet handed. But there was no one there. I'll catch that bast... Wait a minute. I took a few steps out onto the deck. Wet foot prints on concrete. Petite foot prints, like those of a woman. I glanced at the women's locker room and scratched my head. Who the Hell was trying to spook me? I started to turn back to take my shower when I thought I saw something in the water. My heart jumped to my throat and I dashed down the side of the pool, yelling for help. There was a body in the water! But as I drew near what I thought had been a body melted away into just some odd reflections from the overhead lights. I cringed and hoped Charlie had not heard my frantic cries for help. Damn, I was starting to scare myself! As I gazed into the water someone gave me a shove from behind. I hurtled into the water in a panic. I was fully dressed, except for the left shoe, which came off and floated to the bottom. I'm a terrible swimmer in the first place and my wet clothes were dragging me down. As I drifted towards the bottom of the pool I looked up and saw a woman standing poolside. I reached out, beseechingly, silently begging for help as I sucked water into my lungs. She dove in! She was going to save me. But as she approached I saw the bloated face of a dead woman. She grinned with lifeless eyes, her long hair twining around her face and shoulders. My vision went white then, and I blacked out. The next thing I knew I was coughing up water and struggling under Charlie's face. He dropped back and gave me room. He had indeed heard me cry out, but by the time he got there I was already in the water and flailing away. He had pulled me out with the dead-man's pole and administered mouth-to-mouth, and just in time. I'm told there was a woman that used do an early morning work out with the weights, and then do laps in the pool. She swam alone and drowned. I still exercise in the mornings before work. I jog my neighborhood. You'll never see me in a gym, any gym, ever again.

 
~jon
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