Speechless with Teeth

I followed him. I don't know how I managed to do it, but I did. Every single move that James made, I shadowed. I saw her. I saw this woman that was so much better than me. She looked so damn frail. For some reason, I couldn't seem to be able to process why James would choose this painted little stick figure of a woman over me. When I looked her over, I was amazed. She was nothing like me; she was loud and outgoing and talkative, and somewhat overpowering. But I saw the way he looked at her. He had this unforgettable gleam in his eyes whenever she spoke to him or held his hand, and the awe in his face when he touched her bulging tummy was haunting.

'It was supposed to be me...' I knew I had thought it a million times. It wasn't fair. I had always loved this man, even through all the hell he put me through. It made me angrier. I wanted more answers. I wanted to choke that woman. I wanted to fight, scream, yell...anything. But more than anything, I wanted that baby. It would cause them both so much suffering. I would feed off of the agony and negative energy they would produce. But it wasn't so. I wanted something I couldn't have. So, finally having enough of spying, I turned away and left.

Late that night, I stood looking at myself in the full-length mirror, naked. I stared at myself disgusted as I compared myself to her. I was now five foot two, not much different than before James and I met. My skin color had fluctuated over the time, though it was still apparent that I had a mixed heritage. My dark black hair now fell down to my waist as I left it to grow over the years. I had gained weight, once 140 pounds, now up to 160. My breasts had ballooned from a 36C to a 40D. She and I had no comparison; she was much prettier. She had pale skin, shoulder-length blond hair, a tall yet thin frame, and this beaming smile that seemed to radiate the room when she flashed it. Her image seemed to be burned into my mind as I looked at myself. Finally, done with my mental torture, I decided to take it to a physical level. I walked over to my refrigerator and pulled out a black trash bag, fiercely throwing away all of the food I could get my hands on. I didn't want it anymore. It took two big trash bags and a small one to finish, but when I was done, I smiled, seemingly satisfied. The only things left to be found were bread, water, and milk. I almost happily dragged the trash bags out to the industrial garbage can and threw them in. This was it. My self-mutilation process had begun.

My weight quickly and agonizingly burned away. Every time I felt like eating, I looked at myself in the mirror and mentally cursed myself. 'How dare you crave food, you fat little whore!' my mind continually screamed through time. Within a matter of weeks, I was down to 110 pounds. The more I looked at my thinning figure, the more I enjoyed it. As my weight slowly withered away, my strength did also. But I didn't care. I deserved it, so I thought. I couldn't even begin to count all of the times James had called me fat and lazy over the time we had been together. Now that I was neither, the irony laid in the fact that he wasn't able to see it. Yet.

I became shamefully innovative during this time when I was thinking of ways to null the pain. I had seen and heard so many stories about how women dealt with pain in such sick, destructive ways. But those stories were lost on me now as I was consumed in my obsession and emotional destruction. I wanted my fix. I wanted to get rid of the thoughts of him as they burned fresh in my mind. I wanted to get rid of the emotion that nearly overwhelmed me every single time I saw him with her. One night, through a fit of starvation and lust craze, I ran to the cupboards, aimlessly opening and slamming the wooden doors. The last door I opened was the medicine cabinet. I stopped in my tracks. There they were; pills - so many, many pills. I threw all the bottles down onto the floor, hoping to find something to fix my craze. Before I knew it, I had a colorful variation of painkillers in my hands. One by one, I shoved two, three, and four....six pills into my mouth. I swallowed them dry, quickly going to the sink to follow it with water. Minutes passed. I was numb, inside to out. I couldn't feel any emotion, nor pain. I couldn't feel the brunt of the lust that I was once in. This feeling of complete nothingness was addictive. I had to do it again and again and again. This high was all I wanted.

Another few days passed. My high dragged on from day to day to day. How I managed to stay working and stay alive was puzzling. I faintly remembered the days that passed by at work where I would continually feign a little smile for my superiors and the smiling customers. But the minute my numb high wore off and I was able to get my hands on more pills, I was off again, diving into the depths of numbness as my painkillers took my pain away for shorter moments each time. Then I needed something more. I needed the pain to go away for good.

The side effects of my pill addiction were, in no way, pretty. All of the drugs in combination with my mostly empty stomach and thinning figure created unpleasant conditions for me. No matter how much water I could drink or how much bread and crackers I would eat, the vomiting and acid belches were debilitating at the least. There were some days where my numbness was so widespread that I was too weak to even get out of the bed to vomit. All I was able to do was lean over the bed and throw up in the small trash can near the bed, filling it with fluids almost every time. Yet, no matter how many times I would find myself in these horrible situations, I silently refused to stop. Not only had obsession taken over my body, but also addiction now did as well.

One morning, on a day off from work, I sat in the middle of the floor. My body had become resistant to the painkillers as I took them day after day. It's a wonder how I never overdosed. I sat in the floor with my empty glass that was once filled with water. I squeezed the glass hard, the pain beginning to consume me once more as my painkillers ceased to take effect. I groaned loudly in frustration, wishing that I could forget. Forget all of the pain and memories that had me here in the first place. But I couldn't. I felt the glass begin to crack under my pressure, but I continued. The haunting memories continually terrified my mind. Before I knew it, the glass broke. A sharp pain shot through my fingertips as blood spurted from my newly inflicted wounds. I screeched at the top of my lungs for a split second, the pain shocking me. My first instinct was to rush to the sink and attempt to control the bleeding, but intrigue stopped my instinct. I looked down as the shattered glass continued to draw blood from my palms and fingertips, just watching as the blood poured onto the floor. I smiled crookedly as the pain seemed to drain from my mind to my wounds and down to the floor. I had found my addiction replacement.

I began to cut very soon after that incident. I could never drain myself enough to get rid of all of the pain, it seemed. So the more I hurt, the more I cut. It was the addiction that I wasn't going to get resistant to. I loved this kind of control. Just like everything else, I took this one too far. In a matter of days, a spiral shaped whelp on my arm flared up almost with vengeance at my self mutilation. Every night, I would cut a notch into my arm, never really understanding why. My pain had become so familiar to me that I didn't even remember what all it came from. I just knew that it hurt. And now that I was almost done hurting myself, I was ready to spread it to the source of my pain. It was almost time.

I allowed a little more time to pass, barely eating enough to stay alive, and still shadowing James and this woman (by now I'd heard him call her Len). I waited and waited, trying to pick the right time to reveal myself, but the time never really came. I began to wonder if the time would ever be right. As Len got closer and closer to her due date, I got better and better at shadowing. Soon, her due date came, and I knew the time was right. It was time for me to make my move.