Warning! This fic deals with topics that are very sensitive and which may be triggering to some, especially to those suffering from ana or mia. Proceed with caution if you are squeamish.

Sanguinem et Daemonia

Daniel Fenton (Masters) is

5'7" and fifteen

and weighs 125 pounds.

He knows something is wrong something isn't quite

Right

And maybe he should eat with Mom and DadVlad, shove that delicious spread the chef concocts each meal down his throat and poison himself with fat

But he's always been skinny been thin for his age and his height and

People are staring. People are still staring at him eyes tracing the back of his neck as he walks and whispering to each other under their breath. Why won't they fucking stop?!

and no one's noticed his weight (that's a lie 'cause Mom noticed) so maybe it doesn't even matter, not really.

He thinks he'd like to be 115. It's a nice number. Not too dangerous not too threatening. It's a number that tastes

Thin

It rests on his tongue like smoke and sweat and blood and ectoplasm and tears

And

1

1

5

will kill the monsters kill the demons obliterate the stares and then he'll stop.

20 more pounds and then he'll stop.

And Vlad allows – no forces – Danny to return to school walk the hallways like a normal teenager. Because Vlad believes with every inch of his corrupted disgusting soul – "Because you cannot wallow in self-pity because you must further yourself because you must be a model citizen because you are MY son!"

And because MomPenny looks at him with those damn eyes and says he should return with a smirk – "You missed out on sophomore year, sweetie and high school is meant to be the best years of your life and you've been cooped up in here far too long and wouldn't it be fun to make some friends?"

And those are the words that condemn him freeze him to the core even though there's already ice in his soul and the snakes whisper ever louder. Friends were those who rotted six feet under in charred obliterated pieces flesh rent from bone.

But Mom is not to be messed with. Because she is a twisted bitch with an angry soul and hateful words and razor-sharp nails that leave their mark across Vlad's muscled torso on a daily basis. Because she is a demon and a priestess and the tormentor and the absolver all wrapped in one pretty pretty beautiful curvaceous creature.

But sometimes there' s something in those poison green curse green eyes, something that looks like sadness looks like agony looks like a cry for help and a cry to help.

Vlad states one day after one of he and PennyMom's famous blood-spilling battles that they have become friends and – oh! – Daniel boy doesn't it feel good to have someone with so much knowledge that can make the hurt go away?

( Danny and Penny, who are both owned body and mind and soul by the Vlad-demon, who do not bother to speak but will often sit hours together in

Total

Absolute

Perfect

Silence.

She knows he can see the bruises and the fractures, the cracks in her perfect façade, knows he can hear the screaming pleading fucking. She knows he knows that she likes it and hates it.

He knows she knows he hasn't eaten a thing in 76 hours and counting.

He knows she won't tell anyone least of all Vlad even though it may very well drive him to an early grave. Part of her feels bad feels actual remorse about this.

She knows he knows that there's a part of her that cares about him, this boy who fought ghosts but was one.

He knows she knows that a part of him cares about her too.

The parts that hate Vlad Masters. That love Vlad Masters.

So very fucking tragic.

And love is such a hollow word anymore so very empty to Danny's ears.

They sit in silence while Vlad rampages. Momentarily temporarily allowed to hate the world and

Love each other.

It brings a kind of peace.)

And so Danny dresses in blue denim and white cotton with a red bullseye and realizes for the first time that

They're not really his colors.

They make his face look all tired and washed out with blue blue eyes sunken into deep purple bruise canyons dull and absolutely lifeless. Which is ironic considering he's already half dead body mind and soul.

122 and counting down. Drifting through crowded hallways and empty castle corridors and no matter how many people surround him still so damn alone.

So it's

1500 crunches

1000 leg lifts

900 squats

700 star jumps

600 push-ups

11 cups of black coffee and

12 laps around the castle

3 more cups of coffee

And there's 24 hours in a day to do it all.

Once you stop sleeping and stop eating there are just so MANY hours to fill. It's so very very easy.

14 calories per cup of bitter black coffee.

120 calories in the 3 spoonfuls of plain plain yogurt he has for breakfast.

42 calories in the apple he peels and slices into 32 beautiful perfect pieces for lunch.

2 calories in the pile of lettuce he so very meticulously carefully hides his mashed potatoes bloody steak and gravy underneath for dinner.

He's never trusted exercise to keep everything off to burn everything away and scorch the demons, but he does trust the beautiful scale that rests in his room that is used before each meal and every workout and after every meal and each workout and the numbers are trickling like blood

Down

Down

Down

That's all that matters.

The demons the snakes are still murmuring still whispering but they approve.

Good

Good

Obedient

Little

Waste

Little murderer

You have never been good enough.

But at least you're trying.

100 more crunches and I'll let you sleep.

500 more and I'll stop the nightmares.

500 more and 3 more laps around the castle barefoot in the snow and I'll let you dream of them.

Let you wake up sticky and sated –

But he always passes out at 499 and wakes up disoriented annoyed on the frozen ground beneath him. Waking to the cold light of the dawn.

And that leaves a sour bile taste in his mouth but he can still dream while he's awake.

Dream of bright amethyst eyes and dye-brittle black hair,

Picture a thin athletic body wrapped in gothic cotton and a sarcastic drawling voice that's slowly morphing. And he's confused because SamSamSam was everything was the only thing he could think of for years of his life and he's losing her to someone he fucking HATES as black ink dye morphs to bright orange red and amethyst crystals turn sickly poison green and the playful grins become infuriating smirks. And now he's picturing pretty pink-stained lips that would be so very very soft against his own rather than purple smeared ones that cracked during the winter.

And he's so fucking

C

O

N

F

U

S

E

D

Because pretty pretty Penny has perfect lips – not like his own that are bleeding and bruised from biting down the urge to consume to scream. Pretty lips that he wants to make smile wants to wrap around a moan as his own damaged, gnawed lips deliver delicious torturous attentions –

And he cums. And tears streak down his pale face because the name that fell from his lips whispered on the frozen air in the dead of night was not the name that needed to escape. It was not a name he would admit to murmuring under torture under the threat of returning his family.

He's sated and it disgusts him.

He aches and yearns and hates and burns but in his heart

Not in his belly and he makes it another 30 hours and 29 minutes without tasting a morsel by picturing green eyes and purple eyes and purple lips and pink lips. Their faces have blurred together and then the terrifying moment comes when Danny realizes that the watercolor cluster-fuck of faces in his mind didn't really bother him anymore.

Maybe he has gone crazy just like MaddieMaddieMom.

Danny isn't sure when all this started this dawn-fantasy-moan-beg-lips-hands-please

When did all this start?

All he knows is the routine the endless monotony of starvation and mind-fucks and subtle looks shared by those who are trapped within the fathomless insanity of Vlad Masters. And it's a soothing thing, really, gives him something to cling to as the numbers flash behind bruised blue blue eyes.

And then Danny suddenly finally finds himself staring at VladDad and MomPenny during meal times watching pretty cotton candy lips lick suck bite chew swallow

Mashed Potatoes

Steak

Gravy

Apple Pies

Honeyed ham

Bread pudding

Chocolate cake

Penny's mouth must take like Heaven.

And Danny Masters (FentonFentonFentonfuck) is 119 pounds and it's taking too long why is it taking so fucking long?!

The demons in his bones are laughing mocking mocking safe in their marrow cocoons deep beneath the surface. And he thinks Penny can hear them because she's actually looking worried now, green eyes hollow beneath Vlad's steelcord grasp on her freedom.

You're a failure little freak they croon happily

It's nice and warm inside your brittle bones.

You tried to kill us once

But you won't do it again

Danny Danny Danny

Little Phantom

You're a mother. Fucking. WASTE!

He'll be damned if he doesn't make it if he becomes a waste

so it's 22 laps around the castle and

15 cups of coffee and

2000 crunches plus his other exercises.

And he's drinking gallon upon gallon of water trying to flush the toxins from his system flush the fat clinging to his organs. His peers shoot him looks from behind phones and whisper in time with the demons but he doesn't care at this point. But it's not working nothing's working because he's sitting on 118.5 and he hasn't eaten in a fucking week despite Penny and VladDad's pointed looks and he can't hardly goddamn walk and it's not fucking FAIR! Then he remembers someone saying apple cider vinegar helps your metabolism.

So he chugs an entire glass full and goes ahead adds some chili powder to the mix because he heard it would help and he throws it up

He throws it up and it burns.

Burns like the ice in his core and the rage despair in his soul.

118.7.

It's not going fast enough.

And he's so goddamn motherfucking hungry.

He can feel his muscles

Consuming themselves

And he's shaking like a newborn lamb.

Even his ghost powers have shorted out.

No more cries of 'going ghost!' to haunt him in the long lonely nights, nothing by atrophy and decay and beautiful wonderful starvation.

And it seems crazy insane that he once

Fought ghosts

Pummeled Skulker into a metal scrap-heap and

Saved

people from the ghosts that stalked Amity Park.

He once called VladDad fruitloop – that word is no longer allowed not in the Masters household – and laughed and cried and all he once had to worry about was ghosts and grades and the Dash-bastard.

He can barely stand on his own two legs.

Something's got to give.

And then somehow he finds himself shoving food down his throat so fast he can't taste it, can't distinguish what the fuck is going down his esophagus. He's eating anything. Everything.

Roast Beef and

Ice cream and

Treacle Tarts and

Apple Pie and

Plate-sized chunks of bread smothered in jam and

Gallons of cream soda and

A mountain of mashed potatoes smothered in sour cream, bacon bits, cheddar cheese

And on and on and on.

It's only when he's smelling tomato sauce and recognizes that he's eating cold pizza on the kitchen floor at 4 in the morning like it's the only thing he's ever wanted, the only thing he's ever needed, that he realizes what the literal fuck he's doing.

How many calories had he just consumed? 4000? 6000? 10,000? 1,000,000?

He's never felt so full and it doesn't even matter because it's

All

Too

Fucking

Much.

And he's never felt so goddamn full or sick or disgusted or terrified in his fucking life (That's a lie because you can still see a still-beating heart clutched in a black-clawed fist still watch the life drain from dark blue eyes and all you can hear is screaming) oh God it's poisoning him calories feeding the bone demons and he'll weigh 300 pounds and he'll never be free.

He bends over icy white porcelain at 3:14 in the morning and wonders what it is with him and bathrooms.

There's voices crooning in his mind telling him he's doing it wrong, laughing at his ineptitude, and he sticks his fingers as far down his throat as he physically can but it's not working nothing's fucking working! His gag reflex doesn't even twitch. And he glares at his reflection in the water and wonders how he got here.

It's funny really, funny funny funny that Amity Park's resident hero – even the demons are panicking now – can throw up vinegar which he wants to keep in but he cannot fucking get rid of that which he wants to

Get.

Fucking.

Out!

And then it hits him so he runs back to the kitchen, grabs the bottle of vinegar and chugs.

Then he's puking, puking, puking for the United fucking States of America and his face looks disgusting all reflected in half-digested food and he promises himself that he will never lose control again. Not like this. Never like this. And he's never been so happy to feel his stomach muscles clench and his mouth water and his eyes nose mouth burn – the demons have not been fed.

They're screaming at him but he doesn't care.

117.3.

And it's enough for today.

Because

1

1

5

is suddenly very very close. Close enough to taste the char and spoiled blood on his tongue.

And he said he would stop –

But how does he stop?

Does he even want to stop?

The answer is no, he doesn't, and 110 suddenly sounds like a very good number indeed.

Yes, that's safe.

Then the demons will be dead dead dead, gone gone forever, and he'll be able to sleep without having to picture bloodred eyes and cotton candy spun-sugar lips.

And he can hold on for another 7.3 pounds.

Penny gives him a look at breakfast that's haunting and haunted and there's something close to pleading in those poison green eyes and she says "We heard

Noises

last night Danny and we're worried about you. You don't look well, sweetie, and we want to help you how do we help you just tell us?"

And Vlad looks almost sane when he realizes that his pretty pretty she-demon actually cares for the Boy Who Almost Ruined Everything. Then the sanity drains away leaving a cold icy expanse of blue surrounded by quicksilver and he's like a goddamn Arctic Fox as he places a possessive hand on her shoulder.

Penelope looks three years younger already.

And Danny actually fucking smiles.

Because he can hold on 7.3 pounds longer.

A/N: Hello once again audience! (If any of you get that reference, rewards via cyber-cake is required). Welcome back to my cluster-fuck! Didja like it? Didja? I'm really trying to get into demonstrating Danny's spiral into insanity here, and - all in all - I'm pretty happy with the result. Now, the next couple of chapters will not be from darling Danny's point of view. There are other characters here dealing with psychological damage (cough, Vlad, cough) and while, in Danny's eyes, Penelope is acting like she cares, there's always an ulterior motive with her.

Although he's not wrong. She does care, just not for the right reasons. Just like she "cares" about my dear Vleb. Because this fucking bitch. . .

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. To those who struggle each day with anorexia or any form of eating disorder, I pray for your ongoing battle. My mother suffered from bulimia for nearly a decade, and I've had to watch her spiral from one extreme to the other. Please don't think yourself beneath anyone. Each and every one of you is beautiful in your own way, and I hope you come to feel this in your own heart. As someone who often suffers from anxiety and depression, I know that saying this is one thing while actually putting it into practice is another, but I believe that we all can contribute to make this world a better place.

I hope I've put your struggle into words that are understandable to those who don't know what it's like.

Please leave a comment, because it's very dis-heartening to see traffic on this story and then only have three lovely reviewers. Constructive criticism is always welcome, although comments such as "This sucks!" and "You're sick" will be duly ignored. Jesus, I know I'm sick, I don't need to listen to you tell me that,too.

Thanks once again and welcome to the Dark Side! BlackRosePoetry