I wrote this a while ago and submitted it somewhere, but I guess it didn't work out because I never heard back. I figured I'd post it here since I haven't written anything in a while.
“I feel empty,” she said out loud midst the pitch
black darkness. She stared into oblivion, and wondered if anything out there
stared back. She continued to blink, trying hard to see that which is hidden.
She fell asleep daring the abyss inside her to
respond.
The morning shone, allowing flittering rays to enter
through the flimsy curtain that hung by the window. The rays fluttered through
the room until they landed on her face, urging her to rise. She felt their
warmth on her face. Drowsily, she rose from her place of rest and sat by the
side of the bed.
She felt different. For the first time in a long
while, the hunger that she always woke up with was missing. She shrugged it off
and proceeded with her morning routine. It was not until she started to change
her clothes that she noticed a change.
As she pulled off her t-shirt, standing only in her
bra, she fleetingly took a look at a side mirror and realized what was
different. She would have screamed and fainted, but sadly she was not that kind
of girl. She couldn’t scream, and to her horror, her body refused to faint.
She stepped closer to the mirror, staring at the back
of the room, through her stomach, which ceased to exist.
She slapped herself.
It was still there, the gaping hole that somehow devoured
all of her abdomen. Instead of her jiggly, fat-filled stomach, there was a square
hole beginning just under her chest and ending at her belly button, which was
no longer there.
She checked if any other part of her body was missing;
only her abdomen.
She got a pair of scissors and cut through the tip of
her thumb. It bled red blood. She was still alive as she still could sense
pain. She wondered if maybe that was hell; some kind of manifestation of
Sartre’s No Exit with a twist.
She tried the door of her room; it fell wide open at
the jiggle of the handle. She stepped outside of her room and she could clearly
hear the noise of her household. Her sisters discussing politics loudly, her
mother giving directions to the cook, the crackling of newspapers, the clang of
utensils, the doorbell…
“Life has not stopped. This cannot be hell,” she
thought.
She put on her t-shirt and went downstairs. Her mother
was the first to greet her.
“You are not dressed? You will be late for work. Would
you like to have some breakfast?” she asked before she kissed her daughter on
the cheek.
“Umm, no, thank you,” she replied hesitantly, “dad,
may I speak to you for a few minutes?” she asked her father, who was hidden
behind the newspaper he was reading.
“Of course,” he replied, “is something the matter?” he
asked as he walked towards her.
“No I just need to show you something, in the study,”
she responded as she gestured towards the study.
They went inside.
“I need you to stay calm and not panic. Ok?” she
warned.
“OK,” he said nervously.
She lifted her t-shirt just a tiny bit to reveal the
vacuum underneath it.
“Is that a new computer trick or something?” he asked
suspiciously.
“No, my stomach is missing.”
“I don’t understand,” he responded.
“I woke up and found this hole. I think I need to go
to the hospital,” she explained.
Her father still stared at the vacuum, unflinching,
trying to understand.
“How is that even possible?” he asked the air around
them rather than his daughter, “OK, just do not tell your mother. Get dressed,”
he ordered.
The trip to the hospital was a silent one. Other than
her father’s erratic driving and a few curse words here and there, no one said
anything.
She was not worried, but rather amazed. It was
something you read in fictional novels, not experience. Involving people in it
made it materialize even more; it was more real and pronounced. She saw the
dumbfounded look on the usually calm and collected doctor. He scratched his
head, looked more intently at “it”, all while clutching the clipboard to his chest
as if it was his childhood teddy bear. He excused himself, and when he returned
there was a plethora of doctors with him. Medical professionals from every
specialization, all looking dumbfoundedly at “it”.
The prognosis: they have never seen anything like it.
It was official; she was a freak, a hollow freak. She
was also a case study: emails were sent, videos were shot and tests were done.
In a week, everyone knew; someone leaked the video on the internet titling it
“Hollow Girl” and the whole world was suddenly witness to her transformation.
The public demanded confirmation that “it” was real. Some considered it a sign;
however each person had a different explanation: it was the end of the world;
she was the chosen one; she is the devil’s child; she must have sinned…
No one knew anything, but for a brief time, the world
seemed to stand still as they all stared at “it” just like her father, the
doctors and herself. “It” was hypnotic. Just like the Monalisa’s eyes, “it”
drew you in and would never let you go. She often found it hard to stop staring
at “it” in the mirror. Her mother was not fond of “it”, and she would often
instruct her daughter not to lift her shirt and stare.
“It will all be over soon, dear. They will find a
solution,” she would reassure herself more than her daughter as she
straightened out the house. It was all she seemed to do ever since it happened;
she would clean everything and anything, all the time. At one time, when the
whole house was spotless, her mother got a bucket filled with water and started
cleaning all the cars outside their apartment building. The neighbors were
pleasantly surprised.
By the end of the month, there was a published medical
study by the same group of doctors who first examined her and were now
carefully monitoring her. An excerpt read: “the case subject has no stomach or
intestines. The body seemed to have rerouted its whole circulation, bypassing
the digestion process entirely. The subject is no longer capable of feeling
hungry, and also no longer capable of eating due to the inability to process
food. She is kept alive through glucose IVs and other intravenous drugs.”
The one positive, if one could called it that, result
of “it” was weight loss. She had always been chubby, something she has
struggled with her whole life. However, in less than a month, she withered down
to a normal looking person. By the end of the second month, she was skinny, and
by the end of the third, she was stringy. She did not look like her former
self. No one was capable of recognizing her, but they still wanted to stare at
“it”. No one could resist. Children poked through the space, adults tried to
tell them not to, but it was too much fun for them to refrain themselves.
One unexpected twist was the branding. After a few
weeks, she officially became “Hollow Girl”. No one seemed to remember her name,
and she wondered whether she remembered it herself. Her former life seemed like
a distant memory. Companies approached her to sponsor their products, and
magazines wanted to take her photos, especially after all that weight loss. She
was the dream of every fashion designer: no fear of a bulging stomach. She had
an elegant spread of her modeling all sorts of midriff-baring outfits. In
between shots, her nurse, who accompanied her everywhere, would hook her IV, so
that she would not collapse.
It took a lot of liquid to keep her alive, and any
extra effort would result in her collapse. The doctors warned her of slipping
into a coma if she was not careful. So, she had to save calories by keeping as
still as possible. At one time, she spent hours looking out of the window at a
fly, whizzing around a piece of rotten fruit. She was mesmerized by the motion.
She identified with the half-eaten, rotten fruit, withering away at the fly’s tentacles.
Life was the fly.
She tried to milk the situation as best she could. She
took any job that was offered despite her parents’ objection. They even made an
action figure and a comic book based on her. Her weapons were safely tucked
away in her hollow abdomen. Another rendition of the comic book figure allowed
a life-sucking storm to emanate from her hollowness. A special compartment
built by a brainy scientist made her capable of controlling it. “It” became a
source of threat for the world as the storm could suck the whole universe in:
she was a human-made black hole. This rendition was not very famous with the
children, who would cry and scream every time they saw her, so it got
cancelled.
By the end of the year, she was famous and rich. They
wanted her to publish a book about her “ordeal”, but she did not have anything
to say. She knew nothing about her transformation. She did not know why or how
it happened, and despite everything that happened, she did not feel any
different. The emptiness within her was even more pronounced now than ever. She
saw it every day and “it” stared at her, reminding her of her dare.
After all, the abyss did respond. She became the
abyss. She would forever be defined by the abyss, which happened to be the one
thing she hated. She had nothing to say about it, and she did not want to
explain it. She preferred that each person would make their own assumptions
about “it”. She preferred them to think and wonder what “it” meant, rather than
defining “it” for them.
Meanwhile, she was withering away more and more each
day. A blog that an amateur writer kept about her let people know how she was
doing. She had millions of followers on social media sites, and she received
emails from everyone; some hated her and others loved her, but everyone knew
that her end was near. Some posted teary videos about their sadness, while
others rejoiced that the “abomination” would soon perish: a sign of the triumph
of good.
She was confined to her bed most of the time, slipping
in and out of consciousness as her body finally registered the loss. She often
dreamed of strange fantasies while out of consciousness. When she opened her
eyes, someone sat beside her. As the world came into focus, she realized it was
him.
“Hi,” he said with a warm voice, stifled with oodles
of pity.
“Have you come to watch the freak die?” she asked in a
frail voice.
“You can’t give me a break, can you?”
“I don’t think you deserve one,” she answered with a
smile, “why are you here?”
“I came to see you,” he answered.
“Why? To pity me?”
“I thought we were friends,” he said faintly.
She managed to utter a squeaky laugh, which made her
instantly dizzy, “we were never friends,” she retorted.
“Did I cause this?” he asked with earnest concern.
“You always had a great ego.”
“This isn’t an answer,” he snapped.
“It wasn’t much of a question, either” she said,
feeling dizzier than before and then she slipped out of consciousness again.
Her dreams that time was about him. She felt herself
curse in her dreams.
When she woke up, it was morning and he was gone. She
found herself hoping he would be there, but she knew that if he was good at
something, it was departing. So, he departed.
When the nurse came, she asked for a bath. She could
no longer move, but she was light enough for a normal weighted woman to carry
her. She would not let any of her family do anything for her, but depended
entirely on her nurse; she was also very compassionate and understanding.
She liked the feeling of water going through her.
Although it reminded her of her emptiness, it was amusing to see the bubbles of
water emerging from “it” as she began to sink to the bottom of the tub. It was
also the only thing she could do without anyone bothering her. She missed
diving in a great expanse of water, and sitting in the tub was the best she
could do. She was able to dive in the sea only once since the beginning of her
hollowness, and it was one of the most difficult and yet invigorating things
she had ever done.
She could only sit in the tub for a short while so as
not to upset her body’s temperature.
The doctors said it was only a few days away, the end,
that is. She wondered what it would feel like, and although it would be very
easy to end her life any time now, she refused. She did not want to make it
easy for the universe. If she was to be consumed by her emptiness, then the
universe was the one to do it. After all, it was its job.
He came again, this time during the morning.
“You left,” she said as soon as she saw him.
“Only after you fainted. I stayed for a few hours
hoping you’d come around, but you didn’t,” he answered, limply.
“Excuses, excuses,” she said, smiling.
“You’re in a good mood.”
“I just had a bath.”
“You always loved the water,” he added, touching her
hand.
“And you always hated it,” she said as she retracted
her hand.
“Only when I can’t breathe,” he explained, an
expression of annoyance on his face.
“Read to me,” she implored.
“I’d rather talk.”
“There is nothing to be said. Just read to me. Take
the blue book and start from where the bookmark is.”
He unwillingly complied. The book was Hans Christian
Andersen’s Fairy Tales, and the bookmark opened to The Daisy.
She closed his eyes as he read to her; she always
loved his voice. His reading was flawless; he paused at every full stop,
animated the text with tonalities and most of all, he made it seem alive. She
could picture every word he uttered in her mind’s eye. It was as if she was
reading the tale herself.
After he read the last sentence, he looked up to find
her eyes closed. He panicked for a moment, thinking that she had passed, but
when he touched her cheek, she woke up. His face was close to her own as he
knelt beside her. His hand still rested on her pale face, and she was staring
directly in his honey-colored eyes.
“You know it’s illegal to molest sick people, right?”
she said.
He laughed, but said nothing. He just brushed her hair
off her face, and continued to look at her.
“You are not the cause,” she uttered after several
minutes of silence, “I don’t think there is a cause.”
He became teary eyed as he looked at her, and then he
buried his face in his hands.
“Do you think I am the daisy or the bird? They both
perish at the end, but I think I am the bird,” she said, trying to dissipate
the situation. She was always good at comforting him.
“You are neither. You are you,” he said after rubbing
his eyes.
“Now, you are just quoting Dr. Seuss,” she smiled,
“the bird and I share the same emptiness, I guess.”
“You were never empty to me,” he replied.
“Just remember me like I used to be, whatever that
was. OK?” she implored.
“Always,” he replied as he clutched her hand.
She passed away with him clutching her hand, with the
emptiness within her, with the world watching and pitying, and with her never
knowing why or what happened. She perished like the bird, neglected when whole,
discarded when empty.
