fast food

Fast food

 “I can’t remember ordering fast food.” Emmet announced as he pealed the pancake off of his face and whipped it with one of his long sleeves. “Anybody here pray for flying pancakes?”  The whole table including staff erupted into hysterical laughter apart from me as Emmets gaze swept the room for the plate-less patient before finally landing on me.

I headed under the table and into a tight ball before he could say another word and before Crystal could lunge off her seat and kick my ass halfway into next year.

“If you didn’t eat all the shit they put in front of you it would have never have come to any of this Mia and you could be smaller now, not so fat that you can’t even curl up properly anymore. You are disgusting Mia. It would take bleach to scrub out those insides and make them shiny again. Your fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!

I squeaked as the voice imploded inside of my head and filled up my body. I clawed at the top of the table until my fingers hit the supports and the fingernails bent back making the blood spill down the side of them in droplets. I screeched again at the pain before it blocked in my throat and made me cough until I gagged.

“Mi, it’s Ok, you’re not in trouble but it is time to get out OK.” I could see the blurry outline of Emmet on his tummy from the right side of me but it wasn’t right and before I could make myself react to him his body morphed into a girl I had never wanted to see near me again. A girl that I hoped I had laid to rest after the last time I had seen her as clearly as this.

“Come with Me Mia, it’s all Ok. I can make it perfect again. I can make you skinny. I can make it all better again; I am your friend, your very best friend. I Love you.”

I screamed again scrambling away from the hallucination before it once again turned back into Emmet in front of me. I pressed my hand into his so he could drag me out from under the table and into the swirling corridor where the walls melted into funny shapes of Sophie, Brian, Joe, mum…

“ Mi! Mi! Focus on my voice! Where do we need to go to Mi? Where do you need to be?”

“ECA!” I shouted before thinking. “Please ECA me!”

Pancakes have explosive tendencies (Mi)

Pancakes have explosive tendencies

Mi

That night I burned. I said nothing else to Connor after he had pointed out all of the things in the house that could trip me up and retreated to my room, but it did nothing to settle me down. I was going to fall anyway and I spent the night in blistering heated agony and frozen solid limbs and there was nothing that could make it go away, and no one to even try and chase it away. I spent the night rocking and crying and clawing at my arms until the skin peeled off under my fingernails making the flesh underneath sorer then even cuts could, but it did nothing to make the pain go away, or to make my head stop spinning around. I thought I was going to die or and least go up in flames but eventually the morning came and the staff knocked on my door to “wake me up” even though I had not slept at all. Of course then came the breakfast to drive me off of the very thin ledge I was on.

The unit’s breakfast was predictable and I liked it that way. It had once taken me to my knees to be presented with cereal, toast and some sort of fruit juice and told that I had to eat it all but in its familiarity I had come to learn how to switch off some of the dread that come with these foods. I had learnt to drown out the screaming and protesting with solid chewing and the exact knowledge of how every last thing would look, taste, feel and even sound. Even though I was messed up and my insides felt like they were about to burst from the day before there was a chance I could have pushed toast down my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.  I might have made it through breakfast and back to my room before my brain imploded. Today however, some dick head dietician and decided to present me with 3 blueberry pancakes and a pot of natural yoghurt to make me unravel.

My mind did the calculations before I could stop them from doing it. A blueberry pancake, about six inches in diameter, 171 calories. There were three of them, 513. One pot of natural yoghurt; six ounces of it. 150  calories. 663 calories altogether. Build up menu size again. over 100 calories more than usual. Internal explosion. Blood. Fire. Carnage. Fleeing.

I wanted to protest. I wanted to stand up get up on the table and stomp the pancakes into oblivion. I wanted to slam both my wrist so hard down onto the Formica that the table cracked and my bones splintered. I wanted to plunge my fork into my chest and pull it open so I could reach in and squeeze my heart until it burst open and the blood spattered the walls and windows. I wanted to rip the flesh off of my bones and poor on the acid until they dissolved and I wanted to laugh allowed as I did it.

I inflated my lungs in a rush and held onto the table with all my might as a nurse announced we could start and forks began crashing against plates and teeth started an assault on cooked batter. For the first time in ages I found myself observing others at meal times and not in my bubble of food and it was disgusting to behold. I could hear and see absolutely everything in high definition and my wind piped closed in and my system filled with even more acid. I could hear a billion knives and forks smashing against ceramic and a thousand throats gulping as the food went into their stomach  and splattered like bird shit onto the ground. I could see half eaten food swirling around inside mouths and through teeth as stubborn crumbs stuck in the corners of people mouths. Inside my head a trillion voices screamed and laughed and crunched and slurped with just one in particular that chanted at me to eat … eat …. Eat …eat!

I screamed, The noise escaping from my mouth in a high pitched rush before I picked up the plate and open pot of yoghurt and lobbed it across the dining room towards the door. The ceramic smashed into tiny pieces and the pancakes landed across Emmets face while the natural yoghurt thumped him square in the chest before dripping down onto his shoes. I had found a way to silence the masses.

This will all end in tears (Esmee)

This will all end in tears

Esmee

 

I could hardly look at Emmet the next time he came into our bedroom. We had both been stitched by then in different parts of the house and I was getting changed out of the bloody clothes that where stiff against my body. Emmet had already washed himself off and changed into a pair of lounging bottoms and an old long sleeve t-shirt that he had made holes in at the end of the sleeve so he could hook them over him thumbs. I had spent the hour staring into space.

“No,” I moaned getting off the bed and wondering over to him even though I was still just in my underpants and tight vest top. He had seen me like this before and for some reason he seemed to enjoy it. Even now with blood smears on my skin and a top that was stiff with the stuff he glanced over my body. “Don’t do that,” I whispered pulling at the fabric of the t-shirt.

“Do what sweet?”  He brushed one of his arms down the side of mine before coming to the crisp white bandage and stopping. Even though he tried to hide it I could see the grimace pull across his face as he tried to imagine what was underneath. I hated myself, more than he could know for ever hurting him.

“You never wear long sleeves, even when it is minus outside you wear short sleeves. “You don’t have to hide it from me. You have taken every one of my scars with grace even though they hurt you. I can deal with a few of yours.” I unhooked his thumbs from the holes and pull up his sleeve revealing the bandage underneath that I had put there. There were no words to describe the feelings that pushed around inside of me

“I don’t want to upset you baby. You’re already blaming yourself for something that isn’t your fault. I caught you by surprise and you had a blade in your hand, I knew that and I did it anyway. It was just an accident, there is no one to blame. If I can just put on a t-shirt and make it go away I will.”

“You can’t-” I said grabbing hold of the top of his arm just above from his wound - “just make it go away. Some things take more the sleeves to cover up.” I felt the tears surface into the back of my eyes again so I turned away from Emmet and pulled my vest top up over my head pretending that I was just trying to get changes while secretly hoping that the blood stained fabric would make a good mask for the tears.

“Honey, please don’t hide those tears from me. It’s my job to dry them off.” I felt his arms laces around my waste before I could prepare myself for them fully. I knew what they were going to feel like before they were even there. I had felt his arms heal as they burnt away the bad bits a million times before but I knew how that actually hurt as he was doing it. I would be reborn shiny and new with just a few hours crying into his chest but he would be the one to absorb all the shit that I was crying out making my rebirth come at a much too high a price.

“Emmet get off of me,” I almost begged, the tears making my voice no more than a high pitched yelp, “Emmet let me go.” I pulled hard against the strength in his arms as the sobbing broke free of its sound proof prison that was inside of me but the louder I got the stronger he got too, his arms reeling me back in close to his body. “Emmet, stop, no, no let go. Let me go.” I sobbed loudly. I pulled once more as hard as I could on his arms as a final last stand before my legs let go from under me and both Emmet and myself landed on the floor. He made his last stand by shifting me up close so I was sat between his out stretched legs and  wrapped in his arms holding me tight and safe against him.

I screamed through my sobbing. I had tried to form more words to say but failed each time I opened my mouth as more and more painful screams broke through the restrictions of the words and entered into the world.

“Shhhhh, it’s OK baby, I got you, I got you. I’m  right here and I’m going to look after you forever. I got you,” Emmet promised as he squeezed me even tighter and rocked me from side to side.  I knew he was crying too, I could hear it in his normally sturdy deep voice but he didn’t even try to hide it. He didn’t have to. His tears were as valid as mine if not slightly more dignified and he wasn’t afraid to show them. He knew the importance of them. In the end, after everything, sometimes there was nothing left to do except cry but it wasn’t a bad thing. It was good eve., It washed the soul clean of all the hurt and it trumped anything else that could be used to do the same thing… Even self-harm, in the bitter end, ended in tears

the truth about "home" (Mi)

The truth about “home”

Mi

“Idiot, you stupid, unbelievable, idiotic, troll!” I yelled pushing Connor away from me so forcefully it made him stumble, “Why the hell in your right mind would you want to come back here and don’t you dare blame me for this! I am not the reason you decided to return to hell!” I had never felt anger like I had felt then. It had been stronger than everything that I had ever felt in my entire life and it swamped my body, making every nerve end reactive and ready to fight if needed. It was chocking.

“This place is only hell when you don’t want to get better! When you are so far gone you don’t give a damn about whether you live or die as long as your little world is not disturbed. The trouble is when you start to get better and want to survive all of this shit they throw you out and then you really begin to know what hell is! I am not stupid. I want to survive and the whole world is against me when I am out there but in here, even though it isn’t much. I stand a chance.”

“Connor it’s crazy! We are in one of the only places around where twenty foot high fences are being used to keep people in and not to keep them out, and you’re the one trying to break in! I never want to see this place again when I leave! There is nothing in here that’s normal or right!” I shouted my feet taking another step closer to him as I went up on tip toes so I could be taller than him. The anger scared me as it coursed its way around my insides but there was no way that I could stop it. I didn’t hate Connor as such. I didn’t exactly hate anyone but I was livid with the world. I was livid with the fact that this was happening in front of me. That someone I connected to so perfectly, who set me on fire, was happy with his ice cold lot in a unit made of more than just physical walls that kept us all inside. If anyone in the entire unit had to survive it was him and he was telling me he had given up on the world.

“It’s not crazy Mi,” Connor shouted back verbally pushing me down to size again making my body sink back into the wall. “You think that it’s all so easy then think about it like this. When you leave here everything that has ever triggered you will be there waiting for you in the cracks and the shadows. So you can survive without cutting yourself in here. You can get on without pushing your fingers down your throat until you spit blood but what happens when you leave? What happens when you walk into that rosy little family bathroom and on the side Emmet’s razor with all its sharp teeth and promise is staring at you? What do you do when you open the cupboard and two packets of Paracetamol promise to take all of your pain away, even more so if you washed them down with the cough and flu medicine they keep with it?  The food in the cupboards won’t be looked away home there what happens when you are feeling just a bit upset, when you haven’t eaten for days and your whole body is screaming at you? You empty the cupboards, every last one and eat until you think you will explode, and then puke until your insides actually do. What about the knives in the kitchen? The cabinet under the sink full of bleach or even that rope on your dressing gown that will suddenly reappear? The hob gets really fucking hot when you leave it on for a while. You could make it look like an accident; you tripped as you approached the hob after she had been cooking one night and put your hands out allowing the heat to blister your hands. I if could have a choice I would keep you here forever! Here you are safe. The only truth about home is that in the end it can kill you!

I shrank back away from Connor as his words set me on fire. I had been in their house. I had seen their kitchen and all the cupboards that where full of food. I knew that they had a knife block. It was  see-through with red knives protruding through the Perspex in there sharp glory each one with teeth that could cut through meat, or fish, or veg… or skin. Then there was the cupboard. She didn’t keep her cleaning stuff under the skin. It was up high probably because of Mia but it was there, in the right cupboard that hung just above the sink. Esmee had got the surface cleaner out of there when I was trying to eat the soup and when there was a cleaner there was bleach. Bleach would do it… bleach could scrub clean my soul. Emmet’s razor would feel glorious as it sliced through my veins… the tablets would set me free…

(Esmee) After the blood

After the blood

Esmee

I yelped because there were no words to describe the feelings that were left. It was agony but I wasn’t sure where it originated from. My arm stung but inside seemed worse. My insides felt like they had been chewed up and spat out before being left for dead but I wasn’t allowed to feel that. I had caused the whole grand mess.

“It’s all OK, it’s all over now, I won’t let anyone hurt you, Emmet whispered just before he turned off the water that felt like it was shooting spears into my open wound and placed a towel over the surface obstructing it from my view. It felt like a twisted game of peek-a-boo, like with simple magic he could protect me and heal all wounds that had ever mutilated me. Peek-a-boo only worked with babies because they believed in it though. They thought you had actually disappeared. No amount of magic or camouflage could make me forget my latest fall from grace.

“I am so sorry; I don’t know what happened to me. I can barely remember… There’s blood everywhere.” The floor was covered in little red drops with a larger pool in the middle. The colours where changing. The bright alive pulsing red was dead now and turning into black stringy gloopy spots like it had somehow cooled at the same time as my fire had. I tried to desperately work out whose blood was whose. My mind thought that there should have been a difference. Emmet’s blood was the pure and good blood and it seemed mad that it wasn’t a little bit brighter than mine or more alive but it wasn’t they both looked the same and they had both turned from a liquid ruby elixir to black blobs of pain.

“Come on Esmee, I need to sort your arm out,” Leo said gently as he took hold of my hand and I felt the congealed blood that had stuck to my hands squish against his. I tried to make my other had let go off Emmet’s but it didn’t want to. My battered body had found some salvage with him. It was like somehow it knew that its repair was often given by his hand. “It’s OK Esmee; I’m not going to hurt you.”

I turned to Emmet for conformation like I was five years old and needed reassurance from a parent that the strange doctor that smelt funny wasn’t actually going to hurt me as he lifted me up and put me on the table so he could look at me. I of course shouldn’t have needed it and my normal logical thirty year old brain new that Leo was a close friend, who bore me no ill will and smelt absolutely fine, however, without his reassurance my hand refused to let him go.

“I will come and be with you soon Esmee, but I need to clear up in here and I left the baby asleep on the living room floor in a pile of blankets. I know she isn’t going any ware at her age but still I feel guilty about leaving her on the living room floor.”

With his permission I my fingers let go of his hand with a nod and Leo led me to the door of the kitchen before turning back to Emmet.

“Don’t go doing anything with that arm before I have a look at it. You can bath it off it you want but that is it. Lenny will sort out the baby for you. We have brought over all of the things that you need. As soon as I have stitched up Esmee I will come and look at yours and maybe then someone can tell me what the hell has just happened.”

That would have been nice. To have a simple explanation that I could tell myself that pointed out why I acted like I did and not like a rational sane human being .I wished blood didn’t appeal to me like it did, I wished that the thought of harming myself until I bled seemed repulsive but it just didn’t, not even after everything that had just happened.

Leo led me up the stairs and into the bedroom where he and I sat down on the edge of the bed together and he took the towel off of the wound to look at the damage. It was still bleeding a bit but the blood had become sluggish now only bothering to trickle into the void in my skin now and then. It had given up on trying to save me and chose to make me feel foolish instead.

“You will be pleased to know that this is going to need a fair few stitches,” Leo said as he pushed the edges of the wounds together then watched as they separated again.

“Pleased? Please tell me you are being sarcastic Leo.” My face got caught somewhere stuck between crying and laughter. In the end I went for a sad laugh of defeat. There was a time when I called out for stitches; when I sat in the A&E with a bloody arm and gaping wounds and felt a guilty confusing feeling of happiness swell inside me like a nauseating balloon when a doctor announced to me I was going to need stitches. I no longer felt that. I just felt sick.

“I’m not pleased Leo. I hate myself. I hate what I do and right now I hate who I am. I hate the way I look, the way I feel and the fact that I still get that rush when my blood first starts to piss out of me. I’m not pleased. I. Hate. it.”   

“I know. It’s Ok. I was being sarcastic. You were not yourself then. I had never seen you like that before but I could tell that it wasn’t something that you were enjoying.

“Thank you Leo, it means a lot that you understand. It really dose. Emmet gets it but at times it feels like he is the only one that dose, and… he forgives me too easily.

“Well what is it that you think you have done?”

“My arm isn’t the only one that will need stitches tonight Leo. I will never forgive myself. I don’t even know what to do. I should leave but last time I did I had to race him to the train station. He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t even love me. He just hasn’t found anyone else that makes him happier.”

“You hurt him on purpose. You stood up to him and cut his arm? That doesn’t sound like you Esmee. Why don’t you tell me what really happened? What made you such a horrible nasty person this time?”

I could have growled at him for not understanding. He was meant to be Emmet’s best friend but he stood and did nothing as I told him I had hurt him. I could not understand why they weren’t as angry as I was. They should have hated me. He should have ordered me out of his life.

“I was holding the blade against my arm with my back to him. He come in and saw what I was doing so tried to stop me. I wasn’t expecting it though so as he wrapped both his arms over mine to take the blade from my hand I jerked backwards and because his arm was underneath mine I caught his fore arm on the way back with the blade.”

“That sounds like the very definition of an accident if you ask me. You never intended to hurt him Esmee it just happened. It’s unfortunate that it happened but not your fault.” Leo confirmed patting me softly on the side of my arm. I knew that he meant well that he was trying to make me feel better, but it didn’t do much to help really. At the end of everything I knew that one thing had hurt my husband and that was the blade in my hand. If I hadn’t been holding it, if I hadn’t been intent on using it against myself so selfishly it would have still been in a box in the cupboard and never found its way down to cut into his skin.

(Mi) What the world is missing.

What the world is missing

Mi

“You could come back to my room, if you want to I mean. I know it is against the rules but they don’t check anymore and…”

“I can’t Mi, I’m sorry…”

His rejection felt like he had come up to me and stabbed a kitchen knife through the gaps in-between my ribs before twisting it around. Had he not felt anything like I had and if that was the case why had he felt the need to undo my bra? I nearly chocked trying to find the words to say but there were none.

“It’s not that I do want to Mi. I’m on green. 10 minute checks they say but I swear they are checking me every two or three. It’s a pain in the arse.”

“Connor you were acting like an Arse. I mean honestly what got into you? You don’t need to act all hard and bolshie. You won’t impress anyone and you won’t get back out of this place any faster if you don’t make peace with people. It’s Christmas in twelve days’ time Connor and you land yourself back in here.  What the hell happened?” I asked just before I tried to twist my arm around to do my bra up again but the stiffness in my wrist prevented me. I groaned with a huff. Sixteen year olds shouldn’t have had problems with their wrists especially ones that they had apparently brought on their self’s It was pathetic.

“I wanted to be back here Mi,” Connor said softly as he came around to my side and moved his arms up under my shirt so he could hock my bra back together again. I shuddered at his touch trying to resist the urge to lunge at him again and lock my lips around his again. I wanted to yell at him for what he was saying but it was impossible to be mad when I could feel his skin touching mine. “It’s fucking scary out there. There are no walls around you, no one telling you what to do. You can walk into any place when you are out there and there are a million things to get your impulses to go into overdrive and trying to control them all of the time it’s exhausting but that wasn’t even the worst bit. For everything that there is out there it is missing something as well and I know it is stupid and irrational but it is true. I would rather be trapped in prison with you, then live as a free man without you.”

(Esmee) The fire eats tonight

The fire eats tonight

Esmee

 

“No!” I shouted taking two steps back from Emmet my whole body shivering and my breath catching just outside of my lungs. I had cut him, physically caused harm to his god-like body and it was my entire fault. The man that I loved and adored had become injured at my hand.

“Emmet I’m sorry, it was a mistake! An accident! I wouldn’t ever even… I mean to hurt you… it’s just… I just… Unforgivable... Inexcusable… just  no… to dream of hurting you… no…no!”  I trailed off from my ranting the vomit gushing up my mouth and rendering my speechless as I let go off his cut and clambered to the sink. The orange and green splashed up the side of the polished stainless steel and clung to the dish rack as well as his ruby blood from my hands.

“It’s fine Esmee, it’s all OK. You didn’t mean to I know you didn’t.” I felt Emmet’s smooth skin on my arm but out the side of my eye I could see that lines of dark blood streamed like odd veins on a plant down his arm and onto the floor… and they were… beautiful…  inviting… perfect… wrong/wrong/wrong… I needed it… I had to do it.

I became under its spell instantly. Everything about the blood drew me in towards it and nothing about it mattered any more. I may have cut Emmet but the emotions that I was meant to feel washed away as easily as his blood and suddenly all I felt was jealousy and lust. The release that was meant to be mine was engraved into his arm and it was perfect. A ruby rose scented red, laced with glitter and joy and absolute ecstasy belonged to him and not me and he didn’t even enjoy or understand that it was a reward. I didn’t just want it. I needed it, more than him, or family, or friends, or even air. I had to have it.

I shrieked without meaning to as I darted, span around Emmet, did the limbo under his bad arm allowed my knees to crash against the floor where I scooped up the razor that was in a puddle of my own husbands blood and pulled it vertically down the top of my fore arm. The skin parted as it went, the flesh retreating to the edges as blood engulfed the surface area in magnificent sticky heat. I turned my arm over and looked for another good spot and found the other side of my arm staring at me. I knew it was dangerous, I knew that the veins lingered just under the surface and that one cut into their blue gentleness could kill me before I even had time to react, however… I would die in ecstasy and for a moment I didn’t care…

“Esmee don’t!” Something bashed into my hands before I had time to make the cut and the blade along with specks of my  blood splashed about ten foot over the kitchen floor. My body reacted before my brain could and I clambered after it slipping out of Emmets grasps.

“What in hell is going…”

“Leo, Lenny, stop her! Pick up the bloody razor!” I had almost reached it as Lenny bent down and snatched the razor from my hands. I got to my feet in one fluid jump like a cat and squared up to Lenny. I would have fought him for it if I had to. The part of my brain that loved and respected Leo and Lenny was nothing compared to how my body craved the feelings that blood gave me. I would have moved mountains and broke rocks for something shiny and sharp.

“Give it to me now!”  The voice leaving my mouth didn’t belong to me; neither did my screwed up fists and the ability to take out Leo if I had to. I growled more pulling my self-higher and for a few seconds Lenny looked as scared of me as I was of myself. I decided I would try not to hurt him too mush. I would scratch and grab and not go for his crotch as I first intended.

“Now that is enough Esmee!” I had no time to protest or to scratch or to kick as before I knew it the man with the loudest voice had hocked his arm around my waste and with his shear force and weight dragged me over to the sink turned the cold water tap on full and shoved my blooded arm in there just before he forced me to lover my head over the sink so the icy water could prick at my face.

I gasped aloud. The elastic that had been tied so forcefully around my burning chest broke and my head began to swim back into focus so I could properly see what I had done and worse feel it. Water had trumped fire in the end but only after it had consumed me completely.