A heavily loaded, slightly rusty barbell covered in weightlifting chalk was sitting on top of the curved pins of an old but proud squat rack.

Harry TheBicepsFLEXKilla turned up the volume of his iPhone and grabbed the bar near the ring markings. He made a small step towards the barbell, closed his eyes firmly and squeezed the cold steel so hard that it almost started crying like a little baby without a pacifier.

Every single step was a well-planned part of his mute-the-gym routine. Harry TheBicepsFLEXKilla had grown to hate everybody in the training facility from the manager to the high school teen who wants to get toned for the summer. Nobody was worthy of his attention and thought process. They were all a bunch of girly men who only care about chest shaving and pulling the cable machines.

”There are no real men left – only sensitive fellas who spend more time in the bathroom [pimping themselves] than reality TV celebrities,” thought Harry.

He didn’t want to hear stupid brah stories about sperm explosions and beer parties while he was fighting gravity.

”No! Keep them to yourself.”

That day Harry needed even more concentration. It was the end of a merciless 3-month Soviet squat routine. Harry’s legs were on the verge of deconstructing because over the last 90 days he had squatted more times than the shaved, sensitive fellas had visited the gym. The pain didn’t bother him as much because the moment was magical. The adrenaline and the PR hunger had thrown it all away. Mad Harry was mad, and nobody was going to stop him from owning the barbell. Furthermore, this was the heaviest work set a.k.a. the money set. Harry was about to hit a huge personal record – 350lbs/160kg for five reps.

The song reached Harry’s favorite part. His heart started pumping blood like a shotgun – every beat was visibly lifting his T-shirt. He squeezed the bar even harder and shook it back and forth.

”Yeah, baby! Ain’t nothing to it but to do it,” he said quietly.

A few seconds later Harry was in a vise formed by the heavy barbell and the ground. It was time to battle gravity. He looked down and forward at a slight angle as advised by the gurus. Then, he took a deep breath, braced his abs as if he were about to get stabbed by a sword and initiated the descent. His left knee was trembling a little, but mad Harry got even tighter and stopped the vibrations. Once the right depth was hit, Harry exploded out of the bottom – screaming like a hostile barbarian. He didn’t care that people were hearing his wail and turning their heads. His only goal was to write – PR: 350lbs x 5 in his journal. Besides, deep inside of him he truly loved the attention. He knew that even in the eyes of the sensitive fellas he was still a true barbell warrior – something those idiots could only dream of.

Harry’s iPhone X was pumping Rocky 1’s soundtrack at levels that usually make the normal human ear bleed, but mad Harry was not normal anymore – he used to be, but those days were behind him. He had become tough as nails and didn’t care about trivial nonsense. ”Put up or shut up!” was his new motto. Pain and suffering had become his only true friends – they had never lied to him.

A few seconds later, Harry was at the bottom of another squat rep. He exploded to the top once again; the repetition felt somewhat easy.

”I am about to smoke this motherfucking set,” he thought.

However, there were three more reps to go. It was a little too early to declare victory.

Harry took a deep breath and dipped once again. This time his left knee was shaking more intensely, and he naturally shifted some of the weight to the right side. At the bottom, he pressed against the ground as though he were pushing the Earth away from him. The push was so strong that the rotten wooden platform underneath his leg cracked ever so slightly. He slowly got up once again, but this time he lost balance and made a small step forward at the top – a bad sign.

”Two more to go, baby,” said Harry to himself. I think he was talking to the barbell – his only baby.

He descended once more, hit the required depth and pushed back up again. At the middle of the ascent the bar froze, but Harry The BicepsFlexKilla was not someone who gives up easily. He kept on pushing. After 20 seconds he was standing tall once again. His nose started bleeding fiercely. Harry could feel the warmth of the red juice accumulating on his lips – it was tasty. The bleeding made him even stronger as though he were a vampire. Harry was really happy inside although he looked miserable from the outside. One of the sensitive metrosexual fellas stopped his triceps pushdown marathon and stared at him.

”This must be the first time this loser witnesses dedication,” was thinking Harry when another voice in his head cut his thought and said – ”Stop being a jellyfish and do the last rep.” ”Ok. Here we go,” replied Harry.

During the descent, he felt like diving straight into Hell. His left knee was shaking like the ass of an MTV bitch whereas the crushing iron on top of him was trying to break his soul and will. He started hallucinating that the mainstream red devil was poking his knees with a nasty fork. Yet he was not afraid.

”Not even the mainstream red devil created by the system is going to stop me,” said Harry, hit depth once again and exploded out of the bottom like a small canon.

Every single fiber in his body was working overtime and begging for mercy, but he was convinced that mercy is a word that exists only in the vocabulary of sensitive fellas and other slaves. Harry **TheBicepsFLEXKilla** was neither. He used to be both – but he had become something else – a barbell crusher. A real one.

As expected, the bar stopped in the middle once again. Harry felt closer and closer to a comatose. He kept on pushing and pushing, but the barbell on his back slapped him and said:

”How do you like that? I will make you my bitch, you little humanoid! You thought you were going to lift me, but you are way too weak.”

”Shut up!” said Harry and screamed as though he were undergoing medieval torture, which was pretty much the case.

The barbell was not giving up. The heartless steel was digging deeper and deeper into Harry’s back. At this very moment, Harry saw something –  a dark tunnel shaped like a tornado was coming towards him.

”I am too young to die. I haven’t accomplished my missions in life. I can’t die today, can I,” thought Harry and pressed once more. The bar started moving up ever so slightly. The tunnel was approaching. Harry could see that the end was close. This is when he remembered a special secret that he had learned from the popular book ”Squat Your Way To a Big Dick”. The secret was that true PRs are never done with perfect form. Harry squeezed the bar as if he were hanging off a cliff, shifted the weight to his stronger right side without feeling guilty that he is cheating, and finally finished the lift. He looked forward with pride. He could see the black tunnel going away into the nothingness.

”Success, baby, success.”

Harry returned the bar to its rightful place and sat on a dirty wooden chair. A sense of immense pleasure started to fill Harry’s body. He had accomplished his mission. Nobody could deny his achievement. It was a fact as hard as sapphire.

Harry really wanted to write ”PR 350 lbs x 5” in his journal, but he was too exhausted to lift a pen. His hands were not listening to him anymore. He looked around to analyze the situation. Almost nothing had changed – the biceps knights were curling; the chest warriors were doing chest flies. However, there was a small difference after all – some people were all looking at him and laughing viciously inside. “Cowards,” thought Harry.

10 minutes later Harry stood up and looked in the mirror.

”Oh. My God!”

His lips and chin were covered in clotted blood whereas his baggy pants were torn at one too many places. He looked like a clown, but the joy of hitting a PR was still in his veins. Nevertheless, he didn’t have time to lose – he had to clean himself and go to work. There was an important meeting that day. His boss was planning to discuss restructuring reforms with him and the rest of his colleagues.

90 minutes later Harry was already in the conference room, but as usual, his boss was late. The downtime gave Harry a chance to examine carefully his co-workers. Normally, he was not able to do so because he was always staring at a computer screen. Since Harry was an office rat most of his colleagues were women with a few confused&undecided males here and there. Of course, this was a strategic investment done by his boss – girls work for less and don’t revolt as often. Besides, they also have tits.

In Harry’s department, there was only one man who ironically was a metrosexual bicep curler – something that Harry despised although back in the day he used to be into biceps evolution too. This is precisely why he chose the nickname BicepsFLEXKilla. He wanted to have the best biceps, but it didn’t happen, and he did a twist. BicepsFLEXKilla evolved into another meaning – a person that wants to punish the biceps curlers in the squat rack.

Harry hated his colleague Freddy, but even he had to admit that the guy had really nice arms. Deep down inside, Harry knew that he was simply a jealous permabulker, but admitting it was extremely painful. He wanted to have big pipes too, but his arms were not growing despite the fact that he was squatting heavy as advised in another best-selling book that he loved – Do Leg Exercises To Get Bigger Arms a.k.a. Squat Your Way To Big Arms.

Harry had to admit that the plan wasn’t working so far, but he had an explanation for the failure – he was not squatting four plates aside. To get his mind away from his Snoop Dogg arms, Harry looked at the women around the cherry roundtable. The level of sex appeal in the office had gone down, or maybe Harry was simply older. Back in the day, he used to analyze his female colleagues and think how he would fuck all of them, but that day he got scared. The pretty ones were fat, the skinny ones were ugly.

After 20 minutes of waiting and mind spinning, the boss of Harry entered the room. He was a short fat guy relying on a strong perfume to cover his natural dickhead smell. Normal people usually needed a gas mask when communicating with him, but the drones in the office were already conditioned to the peculiar mixture.

”Ladies, Harry, Freddy, I am glad that you are all here,” said Mr. SmellyCash.

”Hello, boss,” replied Freddy and the girls.

Harry responded only with his eyes and didn’t say anything.

”Before starting this meeting I want to discuss something specific only with Harry and Freddy. Girls, can you leave us alone for a second? The men in the room must discuss something really important. Feel free to make me a coffee,” ordered Mr. SmellyCash.

The female crowd left without asking questions. As always, Mr.SmellyCash looked at their behinds while they were leaving the room – a bad useless habit he couldn’t help.

Once the door was shut, Mr. SmellyCash turned towards the two iconic muscle warriors. One of them was a biceps curler veteran, the other – a squatting machine, and yet their eyes were full of fear.

Freddy crossed his hands on purpose in order to push out his biceps even more. Harry was looking like a cheeky devil thanks to the extra strength that he had gained from the PR.

Mr. SmellyCash said: ”You bitches are fired, but you will submit a resignation letter yourself. As you know, I never pay severance packages.”

”But…,” said Freddy.

”Shut up,” said Mr. SmellyCash and put his index finger up.

”But…,”said HarryTheBICEPSFlexKilla.

”You too,” added Mr. SmellyCash. ”I want you gone tomorrow. Period. And if you are planning to complain, I want you to know that I will use all my connections to ruin your lives. The only job that you will be able to get in this city will be as servants of the local mall toilet cleaners. Now get out of my face.”

The two left the room without saying anything else.

”I guess big biceps don’t mean much in the real world,” thought Freddy.

”I guess big squat numbers don’t mean much when you are a social insect,” thought Harry.

They returned to their desks without looking at each other at all.