She knew she had to buy more food before another massive eating binge struck. The grocery store near her on Bath road wasn’t her usual but she didn’t want to stray far from home. She bought bags of chips, a loaf of bread, more milk, a huge bag of macaroni noodles, an assortment of granola bars and various other ready-to-eat snacks. Based on the two hunger episodes she’d had she figured it would be wise to stock up on things she didn’t have to take a lot of time to prepare. Once she got back to the apartment she cooked up a huge pot of the macaroni, mixed it with Italian dressing and stored it in tupperware in the fridge.
It struck her as odd that even though she was handling and cooking food it wasn’t making her feel hungry in the slightest. She hadn’t eaten since the last binge and hadn’t even thought to eat any breakfast. It seemed that when she wasn’t completely consumed by hunger she wasn’t feeling any at all. She had zero urge to eat.
She experimented by eating a granola bar. It went down all right but she felt neither satisfaction or revulsion.
Something mildly disgusting occurred to her. Had she gone to the bathroom since waking up on the ground on Saturday morning, two days earlier? She’d spent plenty of time in the bathroom performing other necessary tasks; bathing, brushing teeth and hair, flossing, et cetera. But after all that food she’d inhaled she hadn’t yet… processed it?
As if in response a burst of heat lit her insides and quickly faded. She put a hand against her stomach and frowned. The granola bar? She ate a single chip and waited a few minutes. A pinpoint flash of fire rewarded her, almost immediately gone.
Whatever was happening to food inside of her it seemed like it wasn’t making a complete journey through her system. This worried her. A lot. Something was happening to it, obviously, but what? People need to poop, she thought worriedly. If there was a blockage in there she was sure she’d have been in agony at this point, what with the massive amounts of food she’d sent down. But if she had an inability to feel pain maybe she just didn’t know she was killing herself.
She sighed. This is so stupid, she thought even as she walked over to the tack board and pulled out a tack. She hesitated as she brought it to her palm and held it for a moment against the sensitive skin there. She pulled it back, brought it forward again, pulled it back again, then stopped, frustrated. “I just have to do this,” she hissed at herself. She brought the tip back to the center of her palm and pushed a little. She felt it quite unmistakably. She pushed a touch harder, watching her skin dimple underneath it. Pressure, but no pain. She watched it push further, then just closed her eyes and jammed it as hard as she could.
She looked at her hand and couldn’t move for a few seconds, transfixed by the sight of the tack embedded fully in her palm. She could see it there, even feel the shape of the metal inside her flesh, but there was no pain at all. She pulled the tack out and threw it away from her, hearing it skitter out of the kitchen and into the dining area. She ran cold water over her palm and pressed a paper towel to the tiny wound. After a few seconds she lifted the towel to see if it was bleeding any more and blinked at her unmarred palm. The dot, which had welled blood mere seconds before, had vanished. She looked at the paper towel. A very small spot of blood stained the spot where it had pressed against her palm.
She sat down and stared at her palm some more. She was starting to feel deeply afraid.
Tags: Chapter Two