Oh! Starving

A Story by Contessa

eating disorder TW. This is part of my ongoing short story collection. Disclaimer: I am not pro-ED in any way, shape, or form. I wrote this story during a recovery of my own to process my thoughts.

They stand around the kitchen, the three of them, separated by the light wood island in the middle of the tile floor and the heady perfume of unsaid things in the mind. Words hang in the air, their edges frayed like the thick paper of a rough water color painting. Maybe one done during some lunch time by an aspiring suffering artist.

Someone grabs the warm handle of a heavy knife in the dish washer and pulls out the flashy blade to put it back in the butcher bock, dividing the scene in half. There is grease on the stove, blood in the tiles, and demons gripping the tongues of the method actors scattered about a very real stage. The light dies as it pushes its way through the quartered window above the deep sink. The girl is standing in front of this heavy window. She has medium brown hair and looks rather average, but she is skinny. Too skinny. So skinny that she has to pull the plates out of the dishwasher one at a time to stack them in the cupboard above her head. The mom stands at one corner of the island. To think that an hour ago she was angrily chopping red bell peppers at the kitchen counter is ridiculous. Now she takes her anger and frustration out on those who deserved soft words and gentle pushes. She denies the intensity of the volume of her voice. The dad stands at the other corner, unwillingly pulled into this discussion simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He sips his bourbon and tries to understand, his voiced inquiries drowned out by the reddish sounds of spite and secrets.

The girl is tired. Very tired. Her eyes are broken and her heart is broken and her mind is broken and her bones would gladly be broken. And her skin is split in places, intentionally ripped at the seams in failed attempts to let the pretty skeleton step out and dance. And oh, dance she would! Her pearly bones shining in the torchlight of a grand ballroom, floating half a centimeter above the stone floor. Un-grounded, if you will, stepping as light as matchsticks through a maze of swirling skirts and glossy waistcoats. She'd walk, head held high, oh-so-high, to the throne to take the hand of the princess beside it and rush her through the music, wind flowing between her ribs.

Just one less meal. Just one less meal or else she'll be so heavy she'll sink, down, down to the bottom of the ocean. All that water would find a way in, somehow, and drown her heart in heavy sticky thoughts of pie and meatloaf and bittersweet burnt sugar cookies.

Why? they ask her. Eat, they tell her. Why not? she tells them. How? she asks them.