Coup De Grace

A mirrored image was humiliatingly marred by a life of self-loathing. The image in the mirror was nothing less than obese. Fat dripped off the girl’s body, overlapping her jeans, her shirt bulging out at awkward, pudgy angles. There was no neck on the image reflected in the mirror, just multiple chins, catching the tears falling from the girls face.

But in reality, the young girl’s sallow skin stretched awkwardly over her bones. Sharp, pointy angles were created, the light dancing off her bones and casting shadows at random places all over her too thin form. Her small shirt hung off of her loosely, except at the bottom of her ribcage, where the bones protruded outwards.

Her name was Marlin. Her fatal flaw was a distorted body image, caused by her intense fear of gaining weight. Also known as anorexia nervosa, a psychological disorder which is characterized by a fallacy of delusions of being overweight, when in reality, the person is, in fact, emaciated.

Marlin’s sandy blonde hair was stringy and dull. The healthy sheen and bounce that it had once had was long gone, taken away by the lack of sustenance in her body.

Her bones shifted in her too-tight skin as she turned from the mirror, hatred burning in her lifeless eyes for the image she was so wrongly deceived by.

Her breathing became labored as she shuffled towards the bathroom, her mind set on one task. She opened the door slowly, and stared at her confessional. She kneeled to the cool floor, the tile chilling her bones through her thin layer of skin. Her kneecaps painfully dug into the floor, so she grabbed a towel and positioned it under her, for a sense of welcome comfort.

A pang of misery struck her as she realized how much it must have taken for her to come to this. Marlin was alone in this world, her life devoid of care. Even as she kneeled on the bathroom floor, her only comfort and safe-haven was a worn out towel, cushioning her knees.

Her arms rested on the cold porcelain seat of the toilet, her eyes slanted downwards toward the water. She held her breath, while flexing the muscles in her chest. Hesitantly, she opened her mouth, and heaved. The contents of her stomach spewed into the bowl, confessing the sin of eating. She could vaguely make out a chunk of celery, and soggy crackers. She wiped her mouth, and flushed her guilt down the drain.

She glanced in the bathroom mirror, her dull green eyes meeting that of the large image staring back at her. Before her eyes, the image shifted, and the monster she saw herself as lightened, becoming thinner.

Marlin smiled a sick, twisted smile ridden with false satisfaction. She walked slowly back into her room, and plucked a cigarette out of her bag. Lighting it up, she took a drag, instantly calming the hunger that was eating her from the inside. She held the smoke in, just like the pain that she was clinging to, proving to her she was still alive. Slowly, Marlin exhaled, allowing the smoke and a smidge of tension to leave her body. Pulling the cigarette back to her pale lips, she inhaled, allowing the rancid smoke to fill up the hole in her heart, and the nicotine to relieve her hunger pangs. Exhaling, she repeated this process, until the ring of fire was burning into the orangey-yellow filter of the Marlboro.