Writing Exercise 21: Xander's Training

Writing Exercise 21: Write from another person’s perspective.

At 8 PM, Xander hurried home sweaty and exhausted from Physical Training (PT) with the Marines.  He dropped his bag, and rushed for the bathroom to take the long awaited piss building in his bladder in the last hour.  As he pulled down his shorts to pee, his arms resisted.  The muscles in his biceps were too taut to allow him to perform this mundane task of straightening his arms.  Panicked that he would pee in his pants, Xander bent his knees feeling his thighs burn and he lowered his shorts.  A long and silent breath escaped his lips as he relived himself in one of the most awkward positions he has ever taken to take a piss. 

Knees and elbows bent, he shook himself dry and pulled his shorts back up grunting from the strain in his arms and legs.  He waddled over to the sink only 2 feet away and decided that washing his hands would take too much effort.  He brushed the wetness off of his right hand on the limp towel as he stumbled out of the bathroom. 

Falling onto the mattress looked much easier to do in his head.  His stiff body wouldn’t even let him collapse with the force of gravity.  So he grunted one more time as he tried to soften his knees to sit down.  It seemed like every muscle, even ones he didn’t know he had, was working against him.  It was just too much effort to put his feet on the bed, so he kept his feet on the floor and felt the cramping of his abs as he laid back. 

Xander stared at the ceiling for a minute and wonderer what the heck he was doing.  All this pain and stress on the body was for what?  He couldn’t even answer this time.  A tear rolled out of his left eye as he thought about the distance between the man he wants to be and the man that he is tonight.  He wondered if anyone else ever felt this way as he drifted off to sleep, his body twitching every few minutes before it finally relaxed in slumber.