By Lena Zeller
TW: Graphic description of eating disorders
Fingers are the most useless part of the body. Splintering against the second row of teeth, if not the first. Getting stuck in places you don’t want them. If you’ve ever seen a seagull choke on a piece of plastic, you’d get what I mean. Barely anything to chew on, fingers.
I don’t know where they go when my mouth recedes to one neatly hinged jaw and thirty-two teeth. The splinters.
The first time it happened I choked on my own tongue. Watching blood and bones and chunks of meat splatter the pavement. Feeling my throat split and shred. Hunched over, rocking in a corner, wiping bile from my mouth. Comforting, the smell of bile in that moment. I wasn’t quite aware of the killing yet then. Too busy processing the eating. Human parts making their way up my esophagus with every heaved sob. What a waste, those first few meals.
I get so hungry now. Fish used to work for a little while. Live, rancid tasting otherwise. My body rejects even the sweetness of water. They sate you more when they’re still flopping around your belly. Many creatures know this.
It is still hard to drag myself, convulsing, from the sea. Belly protruding on the rocks, drying for hours in the mist. You have to get them somewhere. Easiest place, the beach. Once I tried to taste one with my small, human mouth. Tasted like biting your cheek too hard.
I always smell of salt and liver now. Baths have become tedious. Working from home to avoid the rain. Kind of the best part of my days, lately. Killing them. I had rules once. No children, that sort of thing.
I never sleep well now. My bed is too immobile, hard as concrete compared to smooth rocks. But I still like four walls. To stop me from wondering what might be out there. What might be like me. I cannot sleep underwater. Insomnia haunts me across the depths. Down there, the darkness is a presence filled with many mouths.
I used to be meek and ugly. All soft flesh and pinky toes. When I return to that body now it feels like reverting to being a fetus outside the womb. I used to dislike staring at the computer all day, but now everything else feels just as dull. At least work lets me keep my walls. I used to think of people’s bodies enveloping me. Now I know they belong inside.
I miss the smoothness of my tail at night. No bleeding, nowhere to be entered. I’ve started to disgust myself in my vulnerability. I don’t remember why I ever liked company. To be touched is to be lonely. The only real thing In the world is hunger. It’s the only thing that grows in me. If only there weren’t so many finger bones.
Painting: The Sirens by John Longstaff (1892)