Nobody could have prepared me for the side effects. I took the first dose as a Nor’easter hit, the storm was buffeting the cheap windows of my studio apartment, letting in a little whistle of cold air as the burning fluid was injected into the pinched bit of stomach fat. It took Reynold, an old college friend of mine, a whole month to procure this for me. Reynold works for a pharmaceutical, the highly experimental and very litigious kind. I felt creeped out just thinking about the place. Reynold owed me big time and he was willing to “misplace” this experimental medicine for me to clean his slate with me. Anyway, the weather and the burning liquid in my veins made me tired so I covered myself in a blanket and waited.
I guess I expected the fat to just melt away right then and there, fat streaming down in yellow currents like the rain outside. Instead I was still me, wrapped in a blanket, fat as ever. It didn’t even hit me that I had taken any medicine at all until I tried to make myself some dinner. The smell of microwave macaroni and cheese sickened me. The nausea was overwhelming as I tried to take just a single bite of the stuff. I supposed this was it, this was the miracle I had been waiting for. It went on like this for days. I tried to pack myself a sandwich or something fruit for lunch. I kept just having to throw it out. Even if I did manage to eat a few bites of salad or something I would regret it, I’d either throw it up or have quite the bad time on the toilet if you catch my drift.
But I was happy. In between the pain and the disgusting things my body did, I would see my face, my own face, as I remember it, as the bloat and weight from years of fast food and screen time started to recede. There was light at the end of the tunnel. Things were changing. I was changing. I could barely stand to drink water let alone soda or coffee. I started having these dragon like sulfuric burps and soul crushing stomach pangs at every waking moment. But it was worth it as I looked at my stomach shrink, my legs stopped rubbing together. I think I cried for an hour when after a few weeks I could see my toes. While the pounds continued to shed I felt like my body was being kicked into overdrive, at night, I stayed awake, shaking and tossing, unable to sleep as my body fed on itself, it felt like the slurping of a garbage disposal unit was occurring under my skin.
I upped the dosage. More than what my contact Reynold told me to do but I couldn’t help it. I was seeing results finally and I needed this. I was no longer a wallflower fat kid, I would be like all the other pretty people I saw in reels and stories. Reynold warned me about the sharp change in my diet. To eat more protein. Eat more greens. But something wasn’t right. Nothing could satisfy me. I tried it all now. Vegan. Paleo. Atkins. Everything sent me to the toilet or caused me to have violent stomach turning agony. It was worth it, I’d chant, it was worth it, I fit in clothes that I couldn’t have dared to even try. Surely this lightheadedness would pass. This waking nightmare of hunger and pain will be a memory.
At night I’d dream of food. Steaks, rare, blue even, bleeding on sizzling black pans, buttery fat and salt making my mouth water as I reached for them in the dream state. I was barely eating anything at all let alone a steak dinner. The dreams were welcome at first until one morning when I woke up with a strange feeling in my mouth. It tasted like iron and mold. I thought for a second I had vomited in my sleep but as I went to the bathroom mirror to clean myself up I found very tiny gray hairs and a dried smear of red on my chin. What had I done? For the first time in a while I felt satiated, not starving. I started to spit out more of these tiny gray hairs and the shards of a tiny bone was caught in my molar. I shuddered, I started to wash my mouth out with water. It was the only thing that I could do to stay sane. What happened? It wasn’t until after work when I came back to my bedroom and found the dead mouse, its head and little forelegs uselessly splayed on the ground, its bottom half was missing but I had an idea of what happened to it.
I kept it a secret. A shameful secret. But as I kept starving away I would find myself missing time. Blacking out in the day and waking up outside of my bed. One night I dreamt of cats meowing. Their mournful and pained cries littered the pitch black night and I knew what was happening, it was no dream. I tried to wake up. I tried to will myself out of the grip of my hunt. I could feel my lungs, my body pounce. Even with my eyes closed and my conscious self locked away I could feel the warm blood and meat enter my mouth in furry strips. This time nothing was left except an orange paw, its claws out. After I got rid of the evidence I had to live in my shame and regret as I ventured out to go to work. Outside a little girl posted a “Have you seen my cat?” poster drawn in orange crayon.
I had to find Reynold. I hadn’t seen him since he first gave me the medicine but I couldn’t keep doing this and he had to help me. What’s worse, I think if I waited too long, I wouldn’t want help. What I was doing felt abhorrent, but that was fading… the taste started to get better. The point of almost no return was probably the dog, it was gamely and stringy with a metallic taste. Even though I was awake and could stop, I was licking my hands to get more of it in my body, I needed it.
I tried to message Reynold but he didn’t answer. I retraced my steps from when he did the hand off. I think I stalked that park bench for almost a week. But I spotted him one day, and I followed Reynold as best I could. He went to a trendy bar. More pretty skinny people sipping diet beers and mixed drinks. He didn’t even recognize me at first, but the buzz of the few beers he had had seemed to drain out of him when he caught sight of me, I was a bit startled at who I saw in the reflection of the bar. This was not the same person who begged him for help so many months ago. I was gaunt with skin hanging off of me. I was pale skinned with yellowing but bloodshot eyes. I looked animalistic, crazed and with. But goddamn it, I was almost beautiful.
He stammered. He tried to act like he was not terrified. I told him what was happening. The hunger. The deep painful pangs that kept me up at night. And that there were cravings, cravings that I preferred not to share with him. He said he had no idea what I was talking about, but before he could continue his lie I took my phone out and played the video I had cued up. It was him the night he gave me the medicine, it was him rattling off the side effects and handing me the medication. He hadn’t noticed but I was smart enough to record it. I had it backed up on my own personal computer so he couldn’t just snatch my phone. His eyes grew wider and wider in panic. I didn’t want to expose him, I told him, he did me a great service, I just wanted to know if he could help me, from one decent human being to another. He agreed, but we would need to go to his house and get some tests done. He couldn’t take me to the lab, there’d be too many questions and we’d both be discovered.
His place was not far away, the rain was picking up in earnest and we were marching through the grime and now flowing garbage of the city. Despite it all, his building lobby was nice and quiet, he had a one bedroom in a fancy high rise. I seemed to be sodding it up with my wet footprints, but he didn’t mind, or maybe didn’t notice, as let me into his home. The hunger pangs were coming back. The dreams came to me in flashes, all creatures great and small, the veins and red meat on white bone formed a menagerie of death in my mind. It put me in such a state that I felt like I could hear my own blood pumping in my veins as clear as I heard the sounds of ambulance sirens outside. In the kitchen he sat me down on a stool by the countertop. He suggested I have a protein shake but I didn’t touch it. I felt an urge for something else. He said that most of the test patients tolerated the medication well, maybe I was having an atypical reaction, he would need to do a blood test. I just nodded. I was between exhaustion and hunger and not ready to make any decisions. As he scurried around looking for instruments, I eyed his skull, imagining what could be inside. He returned with not only a syringe, but also a petri dish, several boxes that looked like test kits and a microscope that he started to set up, but he was not used to working in his home, or maybe he was drunk, because he was haphazard, clumsy, and he dropped a microscope slide, maybe it was instinct, maybe it was nerves, whatever it was, Reynold attempted to catch the falling glass, only to cut himself in the process. He backed away. Instantly displeased and dismayed about the long cut on his fingers, tripping backwards onto his bottom and sitting up on the kitchen floor.
The thin line broke a crimson streak across two of his fingers and palm. It was mesmerizing. Like light peeking out of the edge of a curtain, just begging to be pulled apart. Exposing what was behind it, the blood teased me, called to me. And I answered. I scurried towards him, on all fours, he was sitting up and gawking at his bleeding fingers.
“Please, let me,” I said with all of the comforting aura I could muster. In a moment my hands were wrapped around his, and he silently gazed at me, drunk as he was, he didn’t do anything as I quickly put the two cut fingers in my mouth. He didn’t move, maybe he thought for a second I was trying to seduce him, but that misconception didn’t take long to be shattered. In a second I had the skin of his finger in between my teeth and I managed to rip a bit off, shaken from his trance he wrenched his hand out of there and he screamed as he watched the bone of his pointer finger protrude out of his hand like a white surrender flag.
He managed to get on his feet, and he forced his way past me, I watched in slow motion as he nimbly went past. I could have let him run off. We could have said this was a side effect of the drugs. It would just be an assault, at the most. I might not even see jail time. But as the blood sat in my mouth, I felt for the first time, in a long time, something that I could not deny myself anymore. I felt not just satisfied. I felt pleasure. I felt like I had awakened something that was struggling to get out. So I reached for his legs, I couldn’t believe how fast I moved now. How much easier it was to move without all that weight.
He fell forward and maybe it was because of his hand injury, or the drinks he had earlier, but he didn’t break his fall, instead he lay still as a pool of blood collected around his head. I turned him over and he moaned, blood covered his face and his broken glasses had embedded themselves into his brow and eyeballs. Instinctively, I held his neck tight in my hands, he put up a feeble fight, his arms and legs swung and stomped for several long moments until they slowed down, slower and slower until they both stopped altogether.
I can’t say I didn’t feel some guilt when I was done. But the meal was so enticing, my hunger was so ravenous, and I finally felt settled. I felt a relief that I hadn’t in a long time, and I felt nothing for Reynold as I devoured most of his face and drank up mouthfuls of his warm, delicious blood. After a night of feasting, sleeping, and ultimately, cleaning. I took a long shower, all my clothes were drenched in blood. I put them in a garbage bag, wrapped in another garbage bag, and wrapped in yet another bag, to dump wherever I got the chance. Then I picked out some clean clothes, a T-shirt and a pair of sweats. It looked baggy and ridiculous on me but it would do. I bade Reynold goodbye and I left the apartment, making sure to take his phone, now buzzing with notifications and leaving it on an express train going the opposite direction of myself.
I didn’t know if the police knew or if anyone had found him yet. There was no news of it. I found myself with an unsettled stomach yet again. The very air seemed to nauseate me. If only I could have had just one more sip of his warm blood or another bite of the chewy, tasty flesh of his. I pictured his bare skinless face, with the muscles and the tiny spurts of blood as the exposed muscle twitched, and I salivated. There was a new sensation as I walked down the street, I could sense eyes, people looking my way, looking at my new confident walk and my thin waist, I had some skin sagging still yes, but my face was unsoftened, angular like a model’s, and my stomach was almost flat. I looked back coquettishly at a young woman who had looked longingly at me from under her sunglasses. She approached and she asked my name, my sign. She wanted to know if I wanted to get a meal together? I looked at her, I could see the blood vessels beneath her pale white cheeks, I could taste it. I let her hook my arm with hers and we walked away. I suggested we go to my place, so we could have a bite.
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