This is a story I've been working one since the beginning of the year. I'll only post the first part for now. At this point I am working on the fourth. I originally planned on having this part just be a short story, but then decided to expand on it.
Warning: These is cursing in this section, as well as grotesque language and content. I wouldn't call it gorey, but that's about the only word that comes to mind.
Thank you for reading!
Willa Morgan, with a hand placed carefully on her throbbing head, stared dead ahead at the enormous stack of plates before her. Covered in a layer of black crumbs, they towered over her. There were thirty-two of them in total. She could tell you this with confidence, as she had been counting and recounting them since she had finished her very last grilled cheese and placed the almost bare plate on top of the stack. Squinting down at her hands, she noticed that the grease from the sandwiches still covered her quaking fingers, but she had given up on having clean fingers shortly after her first bite. She rubbed one hand down the opposite sleeve of her large, black t-shirt, but her fingers were too weak to rub the grease completely off. Her stomach began to ache and twitch in her belly. “Thirty-two.” She said under her breath, as if someone was there to hear, “thirty...” Suddenly, she couldn’t remember anymore.
Willa was not particularly gluttonous, but that night the mood had just struck. She could not recall what had occurred, between her coming home and the first sizzle of butter hitting her unused skillet, which could possibly have provoked her raging need for that one sandwich. It could have been anything though for, despite her fragile, drained exterior, Willa had a tendency to overreact.
That cheese melted to perfection, although she must have accidentally burned the bread without noticing. She licked her palette; it was still dry and tasted foul. Holding her hands up to enclose her vacant face, she breathed out heavily, surprised that it smelled strongly of cheese, and not whatever bitter, dry taste that coated the inside of her mouth. She let another inward breath of air pass her lips. She closed her mouth tightly and held it behind her teeth, but the harsh taste remained.
She reached for a small cigarette box on the counter and opened it to find it was empty. She made a mental note to go out for more in the morning after her jog and put the box at the end of the table.
Her thin, bare thighs shivered, covered only by a thin layer of pajama shorts. Rubbing her legs with the inside of her hand, she could feel thin hairs. She stroked them again and again, stirring up a deep frustration. It had been several months since she had a chance to shave. She rubbed her tongue along her teeth; beneath the foul taste was a hint of warm cheese.
She slowly and carefully lifted herself off her stool and walked towards the sink with the first plate from the top of the pile. Continuously, she slipped and had to grab onto the wooden table to keep herself up. But the floor didn’t feel wet when she inspected it with her heel. She managed to reach the sink, deposited her dirty plate, and attempted to repeat the process. She felt weak, and stopped halfway to the sink. She ran her hands through her hair, pulling the thin strands up off her scalp. Her hand reached her face and she pulled at her eyelids to wake herself up, assuming that the lifelessness in her arms was from a lack of rest. She lowered her hollow eyes to the floor, where pieces of her brittle hair lay in a small pile.
Suddenly, the floor was inches away. She felt her nose slam against the tiles. “Shit.” Willa attempted to lift her head, but an onslaught of nausea struck her down and she seemed to be falling farther. The air around her weighed down on her weak back and arms, pushing her deeper into the floor, and for a moment she felt herself sinking into the apartment below. The whole room started disappearing behind an ever-growing brown cloud, which thumped to the beat of her pounding head. The phone started ringing somewhere in the distance.
Willa waited on the floor, resting. She could feel the time passing but sleep didn’t come. No matter how tight her bare eyes closed it would only be for a few moments, and she just grew more and more tired.
Finally, her head stopped swimming and her vision became clear again. She could hear her 5 A.M. alarm going off in her room down the hall; it was time for her to get ready for her morning jog. The last time she could remember seeing on her kitchen clock was 11 P.M... Convincing herself that she had slept, she rolled onto her side and pulled herself up. Her headache was gone but the hard hammering in her chest had gotten louder. She could feel vomit brewing in her irritated stomach.
The answering machine was blinking. Crossing the room, she found herself tripping over things that were strewn across her tile floor. Each object she tripped over skidded and made a harsh scratching noise, like nails on a chalkboard. But her pressing curiosity about her messages led her to avoid looking down to identify them.
She triggered a few buttons on the machine and the staccato computer voice indicated the amount of messages and let out a loud beep.
“Hey Willa, it’s me. It was wonderful seeing you last night. Um… we had a lot of fun and we missed you a lot and we were worried about you not eating. After, when we got home, we weren’t sure if it was such a good idea to take you out to eat so soon. Well, call back when you can. You know my number. Love you.”
It beeped again.
Willa shook her head and breathed a sarcastic puff through her mouth. They think I’m sick. Willa thought. She glanced back at her pile of plates. I’ve never been better.
Willa’s stomach gurgled a familiar gurgle, and the taste of stomach acid tickled her tongue. She coughed and swallowed, trying to hold the impending expulsion off, but the strength of those thirty-something sandwiches was far too strong for any tricks. Grabbing the nearest trashcan, Willa swung herself around and let go. Her throat started burning as it was stretched with waste. Tears streamed down her face, her throat ripped and pulled beyond its limits. She cried and cried until it finally stopped and she fell to her hands and knees. Her palms scratched and attached to something on the tile, and she lifted her hand to remove it. The little sliver of plastic left two rows of five small circle indents on her palm. The plastic was coated with gold foil on one side, and silver on the other. But the side with silver foil had ten holes, two rows of five, punched into it revealing ten small circular caves. Willa was overcome with confusion by the alien object she held. She glanced across the kitchen floor. Identical plastic slivers were strewn all over, all of them adorned with the same empty holes. Her heart dropped into her stomach and a memory that was hidden in the depths of her unconscious crawled, desperately, into her thoughts.
“Seventy one, seventy two, seventy three. Eighty eight, eighty nine.” She wiped a strand of spit from her chin. Her lips were ripped at the edges from the impact, the unnatural stretch was too much for the paper-thin skin that surrounded her mouth and her weak, forgotten jaws, and blood was dripping down her chin.
She tried to wave the memory away. “They think I’m sick. They think I’m sick.” Her palms slapped hard against her forehead. They pounded her legs and stomach, harder and harder each time until her entire thigh would blush from the pain. It felt good, the single, massive rush of adrenaline sent out by her wilting brain, desperately trying to defend against the unseen danger. Willa cursed and screamed and fell on her side. She grabbed her hair from her weak scalp and ripped it downwards; covering her face, clumps of the dry, thinning hair fell from the impact. Her thighs came together and bent at the knees, and met her chest. She lay that way for a while, sobbing violently into her knees. Finally, the memory waved away and was gone, hopefully forever.
Something caught her eye. She turned towards the trashcan, collecting the plastic containers that were scattered beside her. What had caught her eye was a small, white, cardboard box emerging from the filled can and floating to the top. With great bravery, Willa dipped her hand into the can to bring it completely to the surface. Using a clean side of her hand, she wiped the visible side, revealing the letters ADIPEX-P. Her hands flew, and trashcan toppled over.
Willa sat up straight, wiping her eyes with her palms and giggling. She grinned; the ends of her bloodied mouth reaching her ears, and threw her head back, leaning it against the wall. Her head was swimming, differently now. Euphoria had sunk in, replacing the anger, and spreading throughout her fragile form. It made her shiver and shake inside her skin, almost shattering her completely. She ran her hands through her hair again, down her neck, along her chest; she traced the outline of her stomach and the length of her hips. It would always feel wrong to her, but for the moment she found it just fine. And she laughed for the first time in a long time. She laughed at her arms, and she laughed at her thinning hair and her torn chapped lips and her wrecked mouth and her protruding ribs and her sickly skin, and she laughed at her hairy legs and arms. She laughed for a very long time, and even when the thought struck her that she may wake her neighbors it didn’t even faze her.
At the moment that this thought struck her, a small ant was making its triumphant journey to the doorway of the kitchen, its stomach full of crumbs. Willa leaned towards it and trapped it in a circle she made with her thumbs and forefingers. “Hello there little guy.” She chuckled loudly. “You’re so tiny, my friend. May I call you my friend?”
The ant didn’t seem to notice her. Willa frowned, rejected. She pushed her hands closer together, shrinking his trap to the size of a quarter.
“I suppose I can’t yet since we’ve only just met, unless I’ve come in contact with you before. And if we have, I apologize because I don’t remember our other or first few encounters at all, but I bet they were wonderful, ay?” Her grin widened and she looked down at the struggling, bewildered creature with her depleted, cold, hauntingly large eyes, that seemed to weigh down her withered face.
She nudged him onto her hand and pulled him close to her face. “I can’t even see all of your little flaws, even from this close, but you can see most of mine from the floor, just by looking up. It’s an odd thing isn’t it, size. Hopefully mine don't scare or offend you. I would if I could, shrink down to your size that is. If I were to we could have a conversation, and I could see every little detail in you. But you wouldn’t mind I’m sure, not after I’d committed so much time to changing. You would be a very mean thing if you did that to me, wouldn’t you.”
She rubbed her ring finger along the ant’s back. The ant didn’t comprehend its capture, and just traveled up and down her hand, in the hopes that it would somehow find a way back to the outdoors. Willa frowned. “I think you would do that to me. I think you would do that wretched thing to me.” She pushed her ring finger hard against the ant, as if to squish it. The creature struggled underneath her, and she released him. “I would change for you too, shrunk down so I could show you all of my detail. But you wouldn’t have liked what you saw. I should just save you from the disappointment now, my friend. I can call you that now, since I’ve done you a favor, right?” Willa pushed the ant into her palm.
“You’re a freak, Willa Morgan.” The ant replied.
Willa stared into her palm, her face softened and turned dark, as if she was about to cry. The ant’s voice was that of a teenage girl, taunting and singed along the edges.
“I wish you’d stop following us. I can’t be seen with someone like you tagging along. What will people think if we let you skip class with us?”
Willa recognized the voice and shushed the ant, hoping he’d stop bringing back memories of her grade school years. She smiled down at the ant, shaking off any hint of shame stirred up by the quotes. She tried to explain her intentions with the girl between the ant’s vocal chords.
“I was only hoping that they’d give me a cigarette, friend, that’s all. I wouldn’t have associated myself with those girls anymore. I just wanted one itty-bitty cigarette.” She pushed her thumb and forefinger close together, making the space between them a bit less than the length of a cigarette.
The ant looked up at her, “What? No you can’t have one. You’re so annoying. I wish you’d just go off and die, there’s no use for you here anyway. Now go on, Willa, hop along now. Go on, fuck off, you little worm.”
“F-friend I just wanted a cigarette. Just one. I was just so hungry and they smelled so good, friend.” Willa rubbed her belly with her empty hand. The ant didn’t listen. The taunts hung heavy in Willa’s ears and tears were welling up in her eyes. “I would have just had one. I was so hungry, friend. Surely you understand hunger. I would have just had one.”
Willa placed the ant on the ground beside her foot and leaned her face in as close as she could from her seated position on the floor. She could not see the ant’s mouth. The creature gave her a puzzled look and didn’t move. It had grown accustomed to the creases of her hand and wasn’t ready to return to wherever it had traveled from just yet. Willa’s face returned to its original expression, bleak, and the misery in her eyes returned to its place as the subtle outline of her expression.
“Liar.” The ant’s voice had changed. It was deeper and sounded older. “There’s no such thing as ‘one last time’ Willa. Can’t you see how much you hurt your poor mother?” Willa smiled; her tearing ceased and she licked her chin as far as her tongue could reach, cleaning some of the blood off, whose flow had finally slowed. The ant grew angry, “you seem perfectly content with this. You little brat, she’s pulled so many strings
for you and you can’t even thank her? I’m surprised she still lets you live in her home. If you were my child I would have beaten your nose in, thrown you down my steps and left you to find a new host to call your home.”
Willa forced a giggle, “Aunt Harriet, you sure are creative.”
“I’m not joking, child. You’re a parasite. Your mother needs to have you removed. You’ve drained her; she’s just a walking corpse. Her thoughts and concerns are only of you. She’s sickly and brain-dead. Hopefully, when she gets sick enough to die, you’ll die right along with her.”
“What do you suggest I do, Harriet? I have to eat, don’t I? I have to breathe, don’t I? I have to sustain my existence, don’t I?” Willa’s face was blank. She sat, waiting for the answer. She remembered clearly what it was, but still prayed that it would be different this time.
“You don’t have to do any of those things.”
“But I don’t choose to do them.”
“You have more choice in the matter than you think.”
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). I just had a problem with the fact that there were no spaces or paragraphs in the text, maybe you should take a look at that. Generally I thought your writing was great and you really had some creative ideas in there.