THIS STORY INVOLVES EATING DISORDERS, IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY THEM, PLEASE LEAVE!
"Amelia you eat so much!" Françoise remarked, skin-pinching, mouth sneering. Amelia laughed and laughed and slapped her thighs and laughed.
"I know! It's amazing I don't gain weight!"
Amelia pulled her head out of the toilet bowl, mouth covered in dinner and memories. The grime of the bathroom stall could not compare to how she felt, dripping tears and mucus into the bacteria infested shithole. Who knows how long she'd been in here, but people were going to start to worry, so she stood up and pinched her stomach and walked out.
The mirror wasn't her friend, it never had been, and it stared at her with swollen eyes and a leaking nose as she scrubbed the blood and pasta off her dry knuckles. It stung, but there wasn't anything she could do about that, so she stayed just a while longer until her cheeks turned back to a normal shade and her eyes stopped overflowing. One paper towel, two, three, and she was good to go, happy to go.
"There you are," Alice tapped her foot impatiently, arms holding her expensive coat close to her chest, "We were waiting on you."
"Sorry! Guess the breadsticks didn't sit too well in the dump truck," Amelia pat her stomach and Felicia laughed from behind the impatient blonde.
"Let's just go or we'll miss the show!"
The group exited the cheesy smelling equally as cheesy Italian restaurant and stumbled in tittering heels to their cars. As Amelia settled into the driver's seat, trying not to watch the way her thighs spread out when she sat down, Alice said something Alice shouldn't have said.
"Erm…Amelia dear, your pants…" Amelia glanced down at the side of her leg and let out a gasp heard round the world. A long split traveling up her backside revealed tan skin squeezed tightly under dark jean, oozing out of the new opening.
"You can't see it when we're standing though, so don't worry. Just thought I should tell you so you know to get rid of those old things when you get home."
They weren't old, Amelia got them 2 weeks ago. Size 4.
"Personally, I don't see the appeal of such tube-like things. How can you even feel comfortable? Surely they must cut off circulation."
A size too small, just for inspiration.
"Hello? Yeah we can leave now." Snap, phone close. "Amelia, everyone's ready now, the show starts in 15 minutes, let's go." Silence. "Amelia?"
Alice watched the other girl carefully, watched how her small nose flared hatefully, watched her curvaceous chest heave under the tight tank top, watched her watch the skin on her legs.
"S-Sorry," Amelia said mutely, slamming the gear into drive, surprising the other girl. "Let's just go." She said it like they were ending a conversation that had held the weight of the world, but boney, tiny Alice didn't get it, so boney, tiny Alice crossed her arms and watched the highway.
Amelia's body was like a highway, in and out, in and out, a never-ending high speed stretch. She was stuffed. Even when she stuck her hands down so far her throat clenched and her stomach heaved blood she was stuffed. Amelia was so full of everything she saw and felt she was overflowing into piles of lemonade and calories and rotten breath and nothing. She was swelling like a stream, breaking dams and destroying villages.
Maybe that's why she got up in the middle of A Midsummer's Night Dream and pushed her way out of the row, her eyes were spilling everywhere, splattering against the nice plush carpet.
The stall door wasn't as heavy as the solid wood door that had preceded it and Amelia was thankful because she was much too weak to push anything other than the familiar cold metal. This tiny room was her friend and she welcomed it with open arms and an open mouth.
Her stomach was relatively empty from earlier, but there was always something in there for her to tickle out. Besides, if she had enough fat on her thighs to rip a pair of jeans, she had enough fat to shove out of her insides.
Unfortunately, it didn't work that way, and when her stomach started to toss out yellow bile, watery and rancid, Amelia gripped onto the porcelain harder. She lurched forward as her body rejected the foreign digits being shoved into her, the sound of fabric ripping in the air.
So that's how it happened, she purged too hard and the jeans pulled apart. It seemed oxymoronic, but that wasn't out of character for her anymore. Punishment to gain self-love, binging and purging, stuffed yet hollow.
She needed to stop; she was seeing blood now, soft streams in the mix of pussy slosh. But her fingers kept going, methodically in and out, back and forth, enticing up nothing but blood and sadness spilling into the toilet below.
A door swung open and everything stopped, the movement, the tears, the small dribble off blood rolling down Amelia's chin, dangling precariously.
"Amelia?" Alice's voice was soft, something it usually wasn't, as her heels clicked on the floor. "Are you alright? Intermission is almost over…" When the only noise she received was a slight gag and muffled movement of feet scrambling across the floor, Alice's fear rose.
"Amelia, where are you?" She slowly opened one stall, then another, then another, bird feet stomping ever closer to the bleeding girl a few stalls away.
'I'm alright,' Amelia tried to say, but she wasn't alright, she was choking, blood leaking out of everything and anything. The door next to her slammed open, Alice letting out another miffed noise. Soon enough, her own little paradise was ruptured as the door was flung open by a very angry, and now very distressed Brit, crashing into her shin and making her scuttle backward.
"Dear Lord," Alice fell, reaching for the girl curled on the ground. Amelia flinched away at first, but Alice caught a hold of her hand, ripping the fingers out of her mouth and gaping at the blood all around. "Oh my God Amelia, oh my God…" She repeated over and over as she pulled the stuffed balloon girl into her chest, not quite hearing her pop and deflate with a hiss.
Hello.
While I've never dealt with bulimia, I am currently fighting the battle of recovering from anorexia. My therapist encouraged me to use my writing as an outlet, so naturally I take it out on the character I identify most with.
Bulimia has always seemed contradictory to me so I hope I conveyed that well with the idea of hollow yet stuffed. It might be hard to understand if you have never felt this way or suffered from an eating disorder, but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless.
Thank you for reading.