Chapter 245 : my turn to fight for them

It took me a long time to loosen my grip on Esmee and to prise open my tightly closed eyes against the world but when I did I realised somehow they had managed to transfer me from the clinic room to the ECA. Somehow they had judged I was worse than usual, more of a threat, and I suppose in a way I was.  The very fact that I couldn’t remember the nauseating face down lift to the clinic room proved that. Had Sophie actually managed to take the last bit of me that was left now, Had I really now lost my mind? Sophie had never been so real, so alluring, so completely terrifying that I had lost my very presence as a person on planet earth. She had always been a part of me. I knew that she was in reality in more control over me than anyone else had but somehow – for some reason, until then I had always been the one controlling my body. Then Sophie had consumed me completely and I had gotten lost. It was no longer Mi playing host to Sophie. It was just Sophie trying to evict Mi. Esmee somehow had brought me back or at least made Sophie retreat back to her shadows, but still I was scared… what if she came back? What if she couldn’t save me twice?

About five minutes later Emmet Swiped his card key in the ECA door and slipped in carrying my pyjamas in one hand. I scooted a little bit further away from Esmee as he watched me with interest. He looked almost convinced as I was that I had become a different person - something unnatural and wrong, like a vampire escaped from the pages of old fashioned horror stories. It hurt to have him regard me with such cold eyes. They had always been gentile before but now they only softened as he looked over to his wife.

“How is she?” Emmet asked Esmee, setting my belongings down in the corner of the room. “Is she responsive yet? She looks a little better – more herself.” I could tell that he didn’t even believe his own words; he was just trying to comfort himself. I had always been responsive though – hadn’t I?

“She hasn’t spoken since the clinic room but she isn’t screaming anymore. She seemed a bit more aware of her surroundings maybe but that’s more hope than anything based on fact. I have been trying to get her to talk or at least react to me but there’s nothing. Have you managed to get hold of Doctor Jordan? I’m worried about her Emmet. She’s been like this coming up two hours. You know what I am thinking; it wouldn’t be unheard of in her case.

 Two hours? It felt like minutes not hours, and what wouldn’t be unheard of?

Emmet tried to ignore what Esmee was saying the best he could but I saw the distinctive signs of distress and pain on his jaw line as he crouched in front of me trying to put himself in my line of vision, I stared around the edges of him, not wanting to see what had been in his eyes before.

“Mi…Mi…Mi I need you to talk to me … Mia.” I couldn’t respond even I wanted to. It seemed that Sophie still possessed my vocal cords even if she had retreated from the bit of my brain that made me coherent.

Esmee sighed, the noise of her anguish plain to here in it and I wanted to comfort her but I had barely enough energy to keep myself sane and out of the abbess. I could feel oblivion was close to me still and if it wasn’t for Esmee’s pain and Emmet’s mock strength I might have tried to edge towards the black hole. I was still tempted even with them there, but it was cold and I had always hated the cold… Esmee was warm, comforting.”

“You think she will be diagnosed catatonic?” Esmee asked to no one. Emmet didn’t answer because of his love he felt for his wife. He couldn’t give her the truthful reassurance she was looking for and he refused to give her bad news. I heard Esmee whine like she was wounded and Emmet grimace at the sound. It always amazed me at how they seemed to feel each other’s pain more strongly then they felt it themselves.

“I actually thought we were getting somewhere,” Esmee moaned again wresting her head up against Emmet’s arm. “I thought we had some hope. I thought we were going to make a difference. She felt different. Like she just needed someone to help her get back to where she could be and then she would fight for this amazing life.”

“They can’t all be as amazing as you my darling, and she did fight which is credit to her. It might not have been enough but she went down swinging.”

It was Esmee’s face that made me stronger at that moment; it was her pain and her intense pain and sadness that pushed Sophie’s black mist further and further back inside my head and left me in control of my own body. It was no longer a case of I should comfort her, I simply had too no matter what I had to break through to do it - Their sadness and her tears where not something I could bare witness to without trying to offer some comfort. They had fort for me and kept me there and even if it was impossible I had to somehow fight Sophie enough to stop their pain, even if it was my last stand on earth.

Chapter 244 : The fight for my soul

“Mi, Mi! Look at me baby! Look at me! It’s me, it’s Esmee. What’s the matter? Where is it hurting? What can I do? Mi please, talk to me!” I could barely make out Esmee’s voice shouting at me and her face was too blurry in front of mine to make out her features. All I knew was Sophie was somewhere inside of me tearing up my chest. She wasn’t dormant anymore, or just a half alive creature, she was fully aware and she was trying to kill me. However like before Esmee had come to save me. Came to try and protect me. She came as the light to break through the darkness that unfolded and twisted all around me. Came to protect everything I was and everything I could be. She came not as a nurse but nothing short of an Angel and right now she was going head to head with the devil.

“Esmee!” I yelled almost incoherently around my screaming “Esmee I’m scared!” I wailed, my tears coming hard and fast vibrating through my whole body before making their escape through my eyes.

“It all right Honey. I got you, you’re Ok. Emmet and I are here and you’re safe. No one can hurt you. We won’t let anyone or anything hurt you.” Esmee soothed even though her own voice seemed frantic before with no other option left she reached out and wrapped her arms around me tight. She rocked me side to side rhythmically in her arms like she was trying to sooth a baby. In a way I suppose that was what I was right then. I was as terrified as any baby, absolutely petrified at what I had witnessed and I was hurting to. Something had reached into my chest and dragged out my heart and there was nothing but the panic and fear that I would never be whole again. Sophie was destroying and leaving voids like black holes that could suck in the stars and the sky and my entire world and I knew I had to keep holding on to the only thing that couldn’t be budged by the blackness and the hatred and that was Esmee.

Esmee was everything that the black hole wasn’t. She was sweetness and warmth and light. She was kindness and she was hope and joy and comfort and I knew at that moment she was fighting Sophie for my Liberty. She was fighting for my very soul. The only issue was Sophie was as strong as any angel and Esmee had been known to fall before.

Chapter 243 : the real Sophie

I of course knew realistically that I was hallucinating but on the other hand every tiny bit of this perfect slim ebony haired girl tried to make me think that she was really there. She was too solid to be something that my brain could make up but I also knew Sophie belonged only to me and my head. So why now was she sat on top of one of the clinic’s cabinets with her head balance on her hands smiling at me through her perfectly white teeth.

I had seen tiny bits of Sophie before but it was only ever in the mirror and she was always hazy, always foggy round the edges like she knew as well as I did that she didn’t really belong to the mortal world but here she was real. Every detail precise right up to the way her chest rose and fell as she breathed and the minute hairs on her arms standing against her bronze skin.

Sophie was stunning to behold in this form. It seemed almost too impossible that my brain could make up such a beauty. Her hair was the darkest Ebony black that hanged straight and shiny mid-way down her back. Her complexion was a sun kissed golden that made her skin almost look like it glowed and her face was just stunning. Her eyes an ocean blue. Her nose just the right size to hang over her plumped perfect lips, but even though she had all of this it was her body that was what stunned me the most. It was more perfect than I thought a body could be. She was so thin. There were no lumps, no bumps no scars or blemish in sight. She was what was expected of perfection. Sophie would have had the shiny insides that I longed for and worked for. Her beauty was to such an extent that I was sure it wasn’t even human and it was so far away from what I had it made every nerve on my skin ach.

“ Aww, poor little Mia, so flawed and dirty. Don’t you wish you could be like me?”  Sophie asked as she delicately flipped herself off of the counter and started twisted her body around to some music that was inaudible to me. Every angle was more perfect than the last and she knew it. I hurt to look like her. “You could be like me Mia, if you tried.” Sophie finished her dance and flipped herself back up onto the counter with the elegance of and agile Persian cat and blew me a kiss. “You know that I will look after you Mia. I am your only friend. These people just want you to be fat and ugly just like them. You are better than that. You could have all this.”

These people… that didn’t fit right either. It was true. Visually in a cosmetic approach neither Emmet nor Esmee matched up to Sophie but they had their beauty. Even with Esmee’s scars and her paler skin she had a glow about her that was so amazing. Emmet was a protector - too tall and too muscular and at first glance scary but he had his beauty as well and they had always looked after me. They had cleaned my cuts, moped up my sick and held my hand when I cried… Sophie had never done any of that. She had only ever caused them. 

“They like me; Emmet and Esmee. They don’t care what I look like and they look after me. You’re beautiful on the outside but they are on the inside.”

I should have known better. I knew what I had done before I had said it and I knew she would be angry but nothing could prepare me for how she would react.  Sophie changed, in front of my eyes, her body twisting and bubbling and contorting into something different, something evil, something dark and terrifying. Her skin blistered and pulled apart and blood spurted from hideous new scars in her arms. Her face become white and her eyes blood red as tears of crimson poured down her cheeks.

“Mia You are destroying me!  I can be your only friend! I was trying to help you. I was going to make you perfect and strong and good. I’m not the bad one! They are and you are!  Look what you are doing to me Mia!” Sophie shrieked, big holes opening up in her chest where a black heart thundered in an offbeat rhythm. “Well I won’t let you go Mia. You’re all mine! I won’t you go!”

With that Sophie exploded and the smoke that was left of her shot in my direction, burying itself under the skin on my chest leaving me no other choice but to scream and scream and scream.

Chapter 242 : The visit

Things became fuzzy very quickly after I threw up enough times and the state of numbness that I had been looking for since I had entered into the unit at last found me. I could just about hear Esmee and Emmet talking to me gently though I didn’t know what they were saying and I could feel Esmee’s gentle hands rubbing up and down on my back but they seemed to be less intense than usual - Almost unimportant.

My whole world seemed collapsed into a slow motion dream sequence as I removed my hands from the edge of the sink and turned my back on what I had just done. In this state it really was a sense of “out of sight, out of mind.” I took big breaths that weren’t really needed but I liked the feel of my chest being expanded right out and sinking back into place again. I could feel the ribs under the skin still when I did this, standing out prominent and pound from the rest of the wreckage that was my body.

“You see you can do it when you, try. When you do exactly what I tell you to do. Who needs them? Who needs food? Is it worth it when you can feel like this?”

The feeling was of my body shutting down from the inside. My brain was sending signals for all the vital bits to work harder because of the unexpected emotional distress and vomiting but at the same time it was telling the bits that weren’t keeping me alive to slow down. It felt like I could bulldoze through the stone wall into the outside of the world if I wanted to but not make the few steps it would take to get there. I was alive yet dying and it felt… fantastic.

I took a few more deep breaths with a smile on my face then opened my eyes to the real world again. I felt so different that I was almost sure that the physical world must have changed and in a way it had… Sophie had come to visit and was now sitting crossed legged on the counter as real as anyone.

Chapter 241 : Sophie's rising

 

Mi

 

“Mia how exactly do you think crying is going to help!” Sophie hissed angrily into my ear; her voice as brutal as a knife through the chest. I was trying but it wasn’t good enough for her. Like always she wanted more and there was nothing left I could give. They were stronger than me and even if they weren’t. I could hurt them. “They don’t care if you cry Mia, they just want to make you fat, fight them off don’t let them do it to you! Hit them if you have to.”

 

“No! No! No!” I shouted wriggling my body so hard up against Emmet’s restraint I thought my ribs might actually crack under the pressure, but Sophie didn’t care and neither did I really. I had to get away from them. They were the enemy even though I loved them. They were the ones who had caused this and angered Sophie and no one ever got away alive from an angry Sophie.

 Sophie took my mind again and made me thrash out my legs, trying to kick Esmee in the stomach. She elegantly stepped out of the way off it. Gave me a look of disapproval that made my heart malt and Sophie’s rejoice before carrying  on syringing the cloudy liquid down the tube in my nose. Every second was another calorie in, Feeding the monster that was living inside of me. They had promised me they wouldn’t make me fat. They said they just wanted to make me better, they had been lying but still they wouldn’t stop. Still they tried to fatten the piggy up.

 Mia ! You are going to make me really unhappy if you try and hurt her again.” Emmet growled using the power in his legs to hoist me up closer to him and hold on so tight it actually made it hard to breathe.”

 “Emmet! Enough! You are trying to restrain her not squeeze the life out of her! And don’t call her Mia! We are trying to prove to her we are the good guys right now and it won’t help if you sink to its level!”  Emmet let his grip become slacker around me almost instantly and I took advantage of his laps in concentration. I pulled my splinted hand roughly upward from his arms making the already broken bones pull but manage to get free. I made a grab for their biggest source of power which was the tube in my noise even though I was screaking with the pain and black dots where exploding over my vision.

 Esmee’s hand found mine before mine could reach the tube and she grabbed hold of it roughly in her haste to stop me, making even more pain splinter up my arm. I screamed out, my chest heaving at the same time unable to get the air it needed while the black exploded over my eyes for just enough to feel my body falling back into Emmet’s.

 Esmee like I had took advantage at my temporary oblivion and hooked my arm back into Emmet’s grasp before slamming down hard on the syringe of tube feed pushing what must have been another two to three hundred calories into the tube what carried them into the abbess that was inside of me.

 “I don’t fucking want it!” I yelled violently trying to shake my head away from Esmee but Emmet somehow had managed to stop me from moving my head as well as upper body, and still the calories flowed.

 “Mia what are you doing? Mia stop her. She has just put the equivalent of 15 jelly babies into that tube and now your body is turning it into pure flubber. Look there goes another five. Fat bitch! How could you betray me for these people! I was going to make you perfect and now look at you - A stupid fat lap cat for these sickos. They say they are trying to help you but even you know she is lying. She just wants you to be fatter than her. She couldn’t stay thin and perfect so she wants to make you fat instead. She’s fat and ugly Mia but I can make you better than that I can make you popular and pretty, just react! Try and kick her again! Go on it doesn’t matter! As long as you are thin!”

 I settled for sobbing harder and struggling less as Sophie’s voice battled against mine making my whole insides feel like it was being put through and internal blender. “Stop it.” I wailed “I don’t want to fight anymore! But I don’t want to be fat! Stop it!” I screamed managing to twist my body slightly so I could burry my face into Emmet’s top and squeeze my arms around him tightly, making my fingers angle around the fabric of his t-shirt so I had something to hold onto.

 “It’s all right baby. That’s a good girl. You hold on tight and it will all be over soon,” Emmet promised as he smoothed my hair down so it clung to my sticky red face. I wanted to believe him that it would all be OK but I knew as I rested, even though I was exhausted Esmee would be finishing off with the liquid meal and it made me feel sick. Too sick to handle in a normal way

 “I don’t want it! I don’t want the calories.” I sobbed again so loudly the noise became raspy in the back of my throat. It was so sore it felt like there was someone in there with glass slashing at it. “I don’t want it!” I sobbed struggling once more in Emmet’s arms and this time managing to brake free because he had adjusted his grip into a hug rather than a restraint. I wasn’t sure what to do once I was out of his arms. I had been banking on him being too strong to break free of but I had and now I had seconds to react. To get the bad stuff that they had put in out of me as quickly as I could.

 I slipped under Esmee’s arm as she made a grab for me and was over by the sink before any of them could even comprehend my actions. I should have pulled that tube out, that would have been logical right then and I knew that but the stuff that was already inside of me, leaking fat and grime into my blood stream seemed more of a problem.

 I stuck my fingers back my throat not thinking of who was in the room with me. I cared  that I was going to hurt them by displaying such violence in front of them but I had to get the food up and there would only be seconds before they grabbed me again and made getting my fingers into my mouth impossible.

 The very core of me hurt as the liquid and stomach acid rushed up my throat and into the sink in front of me cascading over my fingers that I only removed when I knew I had done enough to keep on going without their help. For a while I would be able to be sick on demand now and there was nothing that they could do to stop that. Their anger and disappointment in me would make me want to die for a while but Sophie had convinced me that it was a necessary evil to have the body of a goddess – to have the body that she always wanted for me.

 “Not a great idea honey. We are going to have to start over now. So the more of that that stays inside your system the less we have to carry this torture on,” Esmee said grabbing my hands away from my mouth and holding them by my side. I pulled again at my throat ignoring her threats. I knew they were not empty ones but I was as good as her in a battle of endurance. I was drained and I was week but I had never become unable to throw up what was making me dirty. The only problem was it was emotionally killing me to hurt her. I could see her face grimace every time I made myself sick. I could register her pain and feel it too and I would have done anything to take it away from her – apart from accepting the food… but even that was retreating. To stop her pain… maybe I could have sucked it up, but Sophie couldn’t.

Chapter 240 : The hard menstrual cycle days

Esmee

 

“hi hon, how are my sleeping beauty’s?” I asked as Emmet let himself into the office about half an hour before we started to wake everyone up. I sent them all up to you to chill before the wakening and Ava’s doing meds. Ingred and Lauren have breakfast being sorted and Alice is doing the measuring of juices and stuff for the build-up menu. Observations are assigned and I have just about finished reading the books…… now.”

 

“Oh how I hate to burst that pretty little bubble of yours “ Emmet smiled as he drifted over to the white board of observations and notes and started erasing everything by Mi’s name and replacing it in big red pen before finishing it off with writing “arm’s length please,” In the comments box. I could feel my soul fracture.

 “So do we have enough nurses to cover this or am I going to have to start breaking down the agency’s doors?” Emmet asked with a sigh as he went over to the shelf of overcrowded folders and got down a blank HNA. He pulled a chair to the edge of my desk and started ticking boxes and writing in a rushed almost unrecognizable scroll. As nurses and doctors you learnt quickly that handwriting had to be barley eligible to count on paperwork as long as it was done giving you something to squint at blankly for reference it was fine.

 “We have a few extra this shift, I can probably wing something. It does mean screwing this up again though, and it was looking so neat. No sticky Mia fingers or anything. So what’s happened that makes you think that Mi has “suicidal tendencies” and is “intent on trying to hurt herself.” I asked grabbing a pen from the pot myself before going about scribbling out names and adding more in on a wobbly drawn Column with Mi written at the top of it. Nothing ever remained perfect for long in this world. Computer grafts looked neat and tidy but they weren’t really real when so much could change with the humans that where represented on them.

 “She got up an hour early and walked down past me to get to the loo. I commented that she was up early and I offered her to come and sit with me in the nurse’s station but she told me that she really needed the toilet and then left. I laughed waved her off and she went to the loo. She seemed happy and OK. I assumed that she just needed to pee like we all do in the mornings. She was in there about fifteen minutes so I knocked and told her that someone would have to check on her so she came to the door and I could tell something was wrong. She was pale and shaking and gagging slightly on nothing then she just had a go at me and told me that there was no way on earth that she was eating anything and that she wanted to die. I asked her how I could help and she asked for a packet of pills, some razor blades and a room to be alone in. I upped her obs. I didn’t know what else to do or what triggered it. I assumed it was too long in front of the mirror.”

 “It’s a possibility, that mirror is a death trap in the bathroom. I remember getting lost in that one a number of times but I think I know what’s happened. I have sort have been expecting it for a little while.S he is 98lbs now, which is bordering OK for someone who has been so underweight. Her hair has stopped falling out and looks healthier and her nails aren’t brittle. Her body is rebuilding it’s self now it has everything that it needs to grow and coming out of starvation mode now that it gets enough calories every day… you know what happens next.”

 “Her reproductive system starts working again. She is having her period,” Emmet sighed even though his face suggested that he was happy about it. I knew how he felt. It was going to be a horrible aftermath to watch. Feeding MI was the easy bit. Making her body physically healthy didn’t take long compared the length of time that it was going to take to make her emotionally OK with the physically healthy body. Then there was the bit that made us smile. If that bit was working the body would be trying to fix the other bits making that dreaded heart attack or kidney problems less likely. We had brought a starving body back from the edge of death which was something to smile about. The sad bit was, we left the soul behind somewhere close to the cliff face.  

 “I would almost bet on it, which means progress for us, meltdown for her and we have to try and contain it so we don’t lose her completely.”   

Chapter 239 : He didn't save me

 Sophie screamed. She had five thousand things to shout at me for and she was going to say them at the same time. She felt every emotion a human on earth had ever learnt to feel. She was angry and delighted, sad yet happy and she channelled them all through me making my body feel like it was about to explode.

 "I told you this would happen Mia. I told you!  You stopped listening to me and now look! Look at your body look at that fat! I told you I would make you thin but you gave in! So tell me how it feels! Tell me how it feels to be so fat……You bought this on yourself of course Mia. You ate all that food. I told you what you could eat! I told you how many calories you could have and you didn’t’t listen to me! I told you no more than 250 a day but you throw that in my face and you ate! You ate you fat ugly cow!...... “I was your only friend Mia, I told you that. I was the only one you could trust. I was going to make you thin and beautiful and perfect. I was going to make people love you again but who could love you now who could love all that fat?... Mia!... Mia! … MIA!”

 “Just stop for a second,” I begged as I buried through my bag to try and find the tampons that had just fallen out.

 "You don’t have a second to waste idiot! Don’t you realize how bad this is? Look what you have done to yourself. Your fat and it’s your fault! You are lazy and fat and that is why no one likes you. You were just good as daddy’s little fuck doll and even then he only used you because there was nothing better. You’re dirty and you will never be clean! Fuck doll! Fuck doll!”

 Tears dripped from my eyes as I pulled my PJ bottoms back up and they clung to my waist snugly. They used to be my biggest ones, they used to fall around my ankles and now they fitted perfectly to lard. It would take at least months to get back to 75lbs. It was too long. I wanted out.

 “Mi, you have been in there a while. Are you feeling all right sweet? It’s just someone will need to check on you soon it’s been fifteen minutes.” I wanted to sob to him. I wanted to run to the door swing it open and throw myself into his arms and hold on tight. I wanted him to make it better, but he had been the one to do this. He had used words and tubes to fatten me up and he had succeeded. He was the enemy. He was the best damn thing in my life.

 “I’m done now,” I said in a strained voice as I tried to negotiate the tube in my throat. I had never felt it before until that moment, but now it was chocking me, depriving my lungs of breath and making me shake.

 “Tell me what’s happened baby?” Emmet said as he regarded my body in the doorway of the bathroom. He was what happened. He and the rest of them had made me the disgusting bleeding lump that I was. I didn’t need any of them. I need you to read my mind, I need you to chase her away before she banishes you. You can save me! SAVE ME!

 “I’m fine. I am exactly what you want me to be right.  I’m over 100lb and healthy and happy. My trousers are tight on me and I have a tube up my nose that is pumping in pure lard and I can’t move without causing an earthquake anymore, but you and the rest of the dictators have it under control right.” I am scared, I am out of control and I don’t know how to get it back. God damn it save me!

 “Mirrors got to you today then. That’s OK. I can see that it’s going to be a rough breakfast but we can work with that.”

 “Yeah, I’m not going to breakfast, like ever, or lunch or tea or snacks. I’m fat I’m disgusting and I am worthless. I couldn’t care if I get so thin I die. That was the entire point idiot!” I yelled as the tears spiraled around my eyes and lingered on my bottom eyelashes. It wasn’t just about being thin. It was never just about being thin. It was more than that. It was about purity and escape. If I was thin enough I could leave myself behind. It was about control as well. It was one of the only things that I had to hold onto. I could be in control of what I weighed and they had taken it away. The tears weren’t for the fat. It was for the part of me that I had lost.

 “You’re feeling suicidal as well? I have a few alarm bells ringing in my head. Actually I have a whole chorus of alarm bells ringing inside my head. Mi, where do I go from here?”

“If you were kind to me you would buy me a bottle of pills a few razor blades and provide me a room where I wouldn’t be disturbed for a few hours, but I can’t see you doing that. You probably have a color in mind Emmet you might as well use it.”

 “I’m quite fond of the color red in these situations Mi, at least for a few hours anyway, maybe we can try and settle down some of those demons as well, because breakfast or any meal isn’t up for discussion.

 “No your right,” I said quietly with a small nod that made two fat tears crash over my cheeks. He hadn’t read my mind or heard the silent pleas that I had been yelling out; he didn’t even battle for my heart, so I handed it to Sophie. “I’m not eating, and you can’t make me.

chapter 238 : Conman

Still angry at what I saw in the mirror, I turned around and grabbed my forever growing toiletry bag from the side of my room and walked out the door. It was still quiet in the unit right now with only the sounds of sleeping and clinking cups from the night station filling the halls. I had obviously woken up earlier then I had thought, or at least the light that danced across my face had. It normally waited until the member of the staff in the nurses’ station finished there tea before waking me up.

 

“You’re the early bird aren’t you; everyone else is still in dreamland sweet. You have got about an hour before I start bashing people’s doors down yet. Do you want to come and keep me company for a bit? I will even make you a cup of tea if you want one.” Emmet smiled as he patted the empty chair beside him. It worried me that I actually felt like taking him up on his offer. I craved his company to much. Something about his presence next to me made me feel safe.

 

“I’ll pass thanks anyway. It’s nothing personal but well, I sort of really need to head into there,” I smiled pointing at the bathroom that was just around the corner from the nurses’ station.” Emmet laughed before waving me off in the direction of the bathroom and I shuffled away from him.

 

I stopped briefly in front of the mirror before I used the toilet so I could do a quick exam of my full body. I still didn’t like what I saw. I prayed every day that the next time I looked in the mirror I would see the sun kissed glowing, goddess like body that I wanted but it never happened. I was just fatter. I would have probably reached the big 100 now, maybe even more than that. Somehow the unit had made me slurp chew and bite my way to gaining nearly 25lb in weight in just four months even though it had taken me years to reach 75lb. It had been all I was working towards. My weight was my biggest achievement in the world. I liked it when people had described my weight as emancipated or painful. Worlds like skeletal had pleased my ears because they were impressed by my superb self-control. They had blown that up in four months and left me with … this.

 

Angry with everything I threw my toiletry bag across the floor so it come to rest by the toilet after it spilled out two tampons on the way there.

“I have no idea on earth why I keep you in there; you just serve to embarrass me mostly by rolling out whenever you feel like it. It’s not like I am likely to ever see a period again,” I groaned to know one as I scooped them up and shoved them deep into the depths of the bag before I sat down on the loo.

 

That was when hell froze over and heaven went up in flames. Saints become sinners and angels fell. Nothing in the world from that moment would make any real sense. All rules and rationality had been erased from me and my body stopped working as it should. Any place that had been set up for me dissolved in an instant. There was nothing but the ringing inside my head and the screaming of a girl’s voice that would not be ignored. I had been promised that I was still thin, that I needed to eat and they would not make me fat. I hat trusted them but I had been coned. The red sticky blood that was soaked into my underwear was solid evidence that they had lied to me. “Emancipated” and “skeletal” did not have periods. Not even “slightly skinny” menstruated but I was.