Anorexia Dreams.

She comes to him in his sleep. She only comes to him when he’s asleep.

That’s how it starts at least.

It’s midnight and he can barely keep his eyelids open. The room is black and he can feel the woman snaking her arms around him. She haunts his dreams and holds him when he cries and shakes.

She’s all bones and edges and pricks and pains. She’s all blood and maps and needles and veins. She’s everything and she’s nothing.

She sure as hell is something.

The day he stops sleeping, she disappears. For a day or two, there is silence. For a day or two, it’s quiet.

For a day or two, he’s okay.

On the third day, she’s beside him. She’s got her fingers wrapped around his throat. He’s choking and rasping and thrashing and dying. She’s smiling and laughing and clutching and crying.

From then on she walks beside him. She flicks her tongue in his ear and watches with knowing eyes. He’s hers and she’s his and together they are death itself.

She tells him lies. At night, she lies next to him and whispers and she holds his hollow body to her naked skin.

She’s a liar and a fake. She’s everything he loves and hates. She’s everything and she’s nothing.

But then again, she sure as hell has to be something.

She convinces him eventually. After prolonged exposure to her nasty words he begins to believe. He finds comfort in her, and he learns to confide in her because now, she’s his only friend.

She starts wearing a tape measure around her neck like a scarf. She shows him and teaches and preaches and fills him up. She builds him up and makes him whole.

He lets the food rot in the refrigerator and fills his body with numbers instead. He does this to make her happy; he’ll stop when she is. He’ll stop when she’s ready and content.

He takes to sleeping a lot now. He sleeps away days at a time because she’s there when he doesn’t and she’s there when he does; he isn’t making a difference. And he’s oh so tired and weak.

In his sleep she sits on his chest and counts his ribs. She glides her cold fingers across each one and sighs disapprovingly.

She’s angry and disappointed and he can’t ever make her happy because she’s all bones and edges and pricks and pains and she’s so alone she’ll do whatever it takes to make a friend. She isn’t ever going to be content because she’s all blood and maps and needles and veins and no human is meant to be what she is.

In a few more weeks he’ll wilt away. He’ll become nothing more than she is and she’ll disappear completely. In a few more weeks he’ll be nothing but bones and edges and pricks and pains and she’ll vanish and he’ll be alone. He’ll be all blood and maps and needles and veins and she’ll be dead and it’ll all be too quiet.

He doesn’t want to be alone so he’ll latch onto someone unsuspecting; someone with a bit of body fat and a healthy self-image.

The cycle will continue and he’ll rot away, leaving another monster in his place; a beautiful monster with bones and blood and skin and veins. A skeleton with edges and maps and pricks and pains.

And he’ll name her Ana, after the woman who came to him in his dreams.