The fuzziness of sleep was fading fast, my brain finally processing more than just the strangeness of waking up in my room. My eyes were on the floor, and that’s where I started, shock holding me in place as my gaze traveled from a tiny pair of feet up slender long legs. My hands moved without any command from me, my fingers splaying widely over a super flat toned tummy, down over the slender curve of hips and back up again to cover firm perky mounds.
Holy shit! Holy Shit! Holy SHIT!
This was some voodoo type stuff. I ran my name, my age, my parents’ names, and my home town through my head, confirming that it was me…at least on the inside.
But if this was me…then whose body did I have…? What happened to heaven and hell, becoming Casper the friendly ghost, or even fading into nothingness?!
Those things I’d prepared for. Watching my blood drip into the full tub of water last night I’d gone over each scenario, banking on the fact that I wasn’t good enough for heaven, my bad deeds hadn’t been bad enough to put me in hell…surely?! I didn’t really believe in ghosts, but I’d eventually settled on hoping for that or nothingness. How good it would have felt to not really exist anymore. Death had been wet and warm. I’d felt it sucking at me. I’d felt the blackness take hold and ooze its way all the way up from the insides of my toes to the very nerve endings of my brain. It had opened for me, and I’d gone with it…gladly! How then was I standing here…me…but not me….?
Reincarnation…?
One step to the left, and my head lifted higher, the full length mirror attached to my closet directly across from me now. This was my bedroom. In the reflection I could see the bottom corner of my blood stained comforter, my wall of hopes and dreams to the left of that –pictures of Italy, France & Europe plastered in a giant circle-, the empty bed my old roommate had left behind. Closer…I allowed my eyes to focus. Dark brown hair…highlighted just as my mothered suggested…check. Chocolate brown eyes…dull but still mine since the day I was born…check. Even straight white teeth, the top fourth one from the left –chipped from the day I’d fallen off the merry-go-round because I was pushed by Sherri Dodd- …check.
Oh Shit!
That’s where the similarities ended. My face was mine, but not mine… In it I saw the face of the four or five year old girl that sat proudly displayed above my parents’ fireplace. That was me. I know for sure because one day -sometime in the summer when I was seven or eight-I was playing on the floor in the living room and I looked up and asked my mother: “Who’s that little girl mommy?” I’d been hurt when she laughed at first, pointing at me as if I’d just said the funniest thing. But then it was my turn to be shocked when she finally answered: “Why honey…that’s you!”
At the time I’d weighed around eighty or ninety pounds, but being that large compared to a classroom full of fifty and sixty pound kids…and a girl no less…I was already starting to get teased. I looked nothing like that pretty little skinny girl in the picture. But she was right… That was me. And that was the girl I saw reflected back at me now.
Much older of course… Taller… Definitely more mature… God she was gorgeous…
The little indent in a slender woman’s tummy, leading in the center from the breastbone just down to the belly button…she had it. Defined, but still soft abs led down into a toned V shaped pelvis and that’s where my gaze hovered. If I didn’t believe it before, I believed it now. My birthmark, I could only remember seeing in my baby and toddler pictures. By the time I was old enough to wonder where it was, my tummy had hidden it from sight. I could see it perfectly now. It was just inside the top crease of my inner thigh.
I was almost embarrassed to be looking at this woman’s private area… But… It wasn’t as if she were a stranger… This was me....somehow…
I shook my head in hopes that it would bring something explanatory to mind…but nope… nothing. Even retracing my steps, I got as far as putting the first beautiful slice in my wrist and that’s where things went fuzzy.
“Ok…” I sighed in determination, my eyes fixed on the ones reflected back at me in the mirror.
My fists were clenched, my lips drawn into a tight line. I had to snap out of this…fast….
“Your name is Evelyn Renee Barns. You are nineteen years old. Your parents are Joel and Cindy Barns. You were born and raised in Pickens, Alabama…”
See… I knew who I was. I didn’t feel crazy… But… There was no denial in those features either.
She looked at me in awe… No one had ever looked at me like that before… Not even my own mother.
“Your name…” I started, and then froze, June’s voice reaching to me through the door again.
“Evelyn…it’s me… June… If you’re in there…I just wanted to say goodbye, and…don’t forget to request the same room for fall semester. I…I don’t know how I would get through this without you as my study guide. Thank Ev…” she paused, sighing and then growing quiet.
I almost jumped out of my skin when a tiny slip of paper swished under the door, landing harmlessly on my welcome rug. Was it even locked…?
“See you next year…” she murmured just as Cassie –one of our other roommates-called her name.
My heart was about to explode. I could feel it thumping way up into my throat, my neck hot and my palms suddenly sweaty. The witch. It was coming back to me now.
“Your wish has been granted…”
But I hadn’t made a wish… Or had I?
Chapter 4*
I bolted from my bedroom exactly forty-five minutes after waiting for June and her parents to leave with all her stuff. Out the inner door and down to the end of the hall, I burst into the stairwell like a rabbit on speed. My feet were going so fast that they slipped from under me around the bend leading to floor five, and I rolled the rest of the way down, banging my elbow on the iron banister, and getting hopelessly tangled in the size twenty-four nightdress I’d found buried in my ‘small drawer’. Most of the dorm suite doors were open, indicating that the students were already packed and gone. The witch lived down here somewhere….
I turned backwards and then around full circle as I ran down the right side of the long hallway first. I could hear music blaring behind one of the doors, marijuana stenched smoke trailing from another. I was nearing the end, when I caught sight of the swipe of black paint over a door near the end. A matching black crucifix -painted right on the frame-stopped me cold, goose bumps suddenly covering my arms and legs.
“Your wish has been granted…”
Her words whispered through my thoughts, my closed fists lifting to the closed door, and then settling back at my waist without knocking.
What would I say…? Thank you…? How dare you do this to me?! Was I supposed to be angry…? Happy….? Upset…?
“Evelyn…?”
A soft voice made me jump, my head whipping back towards the way I’d just come. There she was…dressed all in black save the dark green back pack tossed over one shoulder. Her hair was different, the mass braided loosely behind her in a fishtail that curved down her front to just above her elbow, but it was still just as messy as ever.
“I… You… I….”
Shit! My words were stuck. Jumbled. My mouth snapped shut, a sigh escaping before I could stop it. How I must look, naked underneath this humongous nightdress. Bare dirty feet because I hadn’t had any shoes that fit…
“You’re in shock…” she nodded slowly, closing the distance left between the two of us.
I inhaled sharply as her hand lifted up past my face, a key slipping into the lock and turning. A soft click sounded and she turned the knob, pushing the door open before motioning for me to go in ahead of her.
A quick peep inside, and I almost laughed. I didn’t know what I’d expected. The room painted black maybe… Incense and odd trinkets lying about perhaps… A dorm efficient cauldron, bubbling with her latest concoction… Sure why not…? That’s what witches used right?
Her suite looked just like mine. Fo
ur rooms: two on either side, a living room in the middle… Nothing strange about that. She moved past me to the door in the left corner, and I followed, into her bedroom. Once again, no surprise: a few pictures on the wall, a laptop on the desk, even the bed was plain. Black spread, black pillow…
“What did you do to me?” I blurted so fast I didn’t even know I’d opened my mouth until I heard the sound of my own voice.
She turned, but never stopped moving, pulling the books from her bag and putting them away, and then starting up her laptop. I stood in the middle of her floor, waiting while she clicked through the welcome screen and opened up a pack of crackers sitting on the desk.
“Sit…” she gestured to her bed, taking a bite of one before offering me the pack.
“No…” I whispered as I sank gently down on her bed.
It would be embarrassing if it creaked under my weight.
Shit! I wasn’t fat anymore…
The breath I’d been holding released, allowing me to face her more comfortably.
“What did you do to me?” I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper as I met her gaze.
“I asked if I could help… You said…only if I could make you skinny…”
“Yes…! But…”
“A witch will never offer her help if you don’t truly need it.”
“So you are…” I swallowed hard, a lump suddenly stuck in my throat. “A witch…?”
She chewed her second bite of the cracker slowly as if considering what she would say next carefully, her lips finally turning up into a small smile.
“That’s what you here are most comfortable with…so yes…think of me as a witch…”
“You said you only offered to help because I needed it. I didn’t need your help or anyone else’s,” I spat, memories of Brice and the night before flashing through my mind now. “I had it under control.”
“Cutting…Evelyn…?”
She’d seen the scars… Or…
“You found me,” I whispered, my eyes going to the bandage that covered the whole lower half of my left arm like a cast.
She was the first person to ever know that I was a cutter. I’d imagined embarrassment or humility if anyone ever found out, but that’s not what settled in my chest as I watched her reach for my wrists, her fingers gentle as she unraveled the gauze wrap. I wanted to close my eyes as my skin finally came into view, but what I saw wasn’t what I expected. I’d buried the razor almost a half inch deep and even longer across, but all that was there was a faint pink scar. My breath held as she ran her thumb lightly over the mark before meeting my gaze again.
“I’ve given you a second chance…this…is your reminder…” she murmured, balling up the stained gauze and throwing it in the trash can under her desk.
I hadn’t asked for a second chance, but -as much as I didn’t want to admit it- I did need help. Somehow…she’d seen that.
“I just wanted to take away the pain…” I whispered, my voice catching as she slid from the chair onto the bed, beside me.
She didn’t try and touch me. She sat with a few inches between her knee and mine, her eyes watching my face intently as I broke down for the first time in front of anyone. I’d never talked about how I felt on the inside. I wasn’t sure why words started flowing from my mouth now.
“I was so fat! And then Brice… And he… I’m a good person! I’m always helping others. Even when I know they’re using me, I still try and make everything right for them and forget all about me. Apologizing for being me! Apologizing for being so fucking fat! So damn ugly! I never wanted to kill myself. But he took it from me. He…he…”
“Raped you…” the witch finished for me, her voice soft, her hands softer as they settled over mine.
“Yeeeeeeees…” I sobbed, curling over into her chest, my shoulders shaking uncontrollably now.
I didn’t have to explain my whole horrible life story to her. For some reason she wrapped her arms around me and cradled me like a baby. She rocked and I let her. I cried for the yellow flowers I’d tried to give Danny Thompson, I cried for the time Sherri Dodd knocked me off the merry-go-round, I cried for the real friends I never had, I cried for Brice raping me, but most of all I cried for being…fat.
We sat for what seemed like an hour, her rocking and me sniffling through the storm of tears that still ran silently down my face. I’d almost drifted off from the exhaustion of it all when she finally spoke, her voice soft.
“It’s really quite simple Evelyn… Your heart’s desire was to be skinny. Now you are. You may not be able to see it right now, but you had a very beautiful life before, helping others was only part of it.”
“So…that’s it…I stay skinny forever…” I whispered, straightening so that we were once again eye to eye.
“I said simple. There are rules,” the witch hesitated, rising into a stretch before she crossed the room.
I watched as she picked up her discarded book bag, pulling free one last item. It was a brand new scale, still wrapped in its cellophane and decorated with a shiny orange price sticker.
“As long as you stay the same good person on the inside, your weight will stay the same. It’s when you let your dark side out that you begin to lose your precious gift. You will gain weight Evelyn. Not fast at first…but the more dark things you allow in your life the faster you gain. It’s a one—time deal…you weighed in at three hundred and fifty-three pounds. As it has always been, your fate is in your hands.”
“You weighed me?” I whispered, the weight of the scale heavy in my tiny hands as she handed it to me.
“It was necessary…”
“But what if I…don’t…” I gulped, feeling the skinny body I now had. It felt great. “…want to be skinny…?” I finished in a whisper, watching as she opened her bedroom door, signaling that our conversation was already over.
“Be careful what you wish for Evelyn.”
**********
I wandered back to my dorm suite in a fog, the scale clutched tightly to my chest until I reached the safety of my bedroom. There I made sure the door was locked, and even slid the chair underneath the knob for good measure. Stuck to the bottom of my shoe was the note June had slid under my door before leaving. I opened it now.
Evelyn…the box in the living room is full of old clothes I don’t want anymore. Drop them at the student goodwill for me would ya? -Luv June
Of course even on the tail of her whispered thanks to me, she was asking for yet another favor.
“Bitch…” I muttered to myself, balling up the note and aiming for the pink plastic trash can in the corner.
I missed. A shrug of my shoulders and I shed the nightdress, stepping from it so that I once again stood completely naked. I wanted to at least know where I was starting. Now would also be a good time to start that journal I’d been planning on keeping; it would help me keep track of my weight.
“One ten…” I whispered in disbelief as the numbers on the scale stopped moving upwards.
I’m one hundred and ten pounds now?! Denial shot through me and I stepped off the scale, feeling my new body with tentative fingers, convinced that it would all blow up –literally-. I stepped back on and once again the tiny red numbers ticked up from zero to one hundred and ten.
Holy Shit!
I suddenly wanted to be free of this room. I wanted to see if the wind felt different as a skinny person. I wanted to see how fast I could jog across campus. I wanted to see what George would say when I walked into the nursing home for my evening visit.
Thank you June! I crowed inwardly as I raced from my room to retrieve the box of June’s old clothes.
She’d left more than just a handful. The box was too heavy for me to lift. It would have taken several trips of hauling separate bags down to the student goodwill to get rid of it all. Bitch!
I stepped on the scale again as I picked up the first piece of material that caught my eye. A little sequined black dress hung from my fingers, my eyes following the intricate
detail down to the red numbers ticking upward.
“One hundred and…eleven!?” I practically squeaked, jumping from the cool white metal square as if it had burned me.
One pound!? How had I gained one pound in the last two minutes?! My body flushed cold and then hot as I remembered the witch’s words.
“It’s when you let your dark side out that you begin to lose your precious gift…”
Ok, so I’d called June a bitch…so what…? Was cursing part of my dark side…? Perhaps the thought of her being a bitch… But she was…!
“Ok…I sighed…that’s one I need to write down.”
I discarded the dress on my bed, firing up my lap top before I forgot. With a words program opened, I saved a blank document as ‘Skinny Rules & Bad Deeds’. With two columns separated out I typed in labels at the top: Skinny Rules and then Bad Deeds once again. There. If my weight changed, I would put in my new weight right beside the bad deed that I’d done, that way I could make sure not to do it again. I wanted to smack myself as I typed slowly in the first column: no cursing, or thinking about cursing someone out. In the far right column I typed: Calling June a Bitch-111 Pounds.
I could deal with one hundred and eleven pounds. I was bound to gain a few over the years. But I wasn’t a bad person…far from it. I made a mental note to find out the witch’s name. In all my haste and confusion, I hadn’t even asked. I didn’t want to call her the witch anymore. It just seemed wrong now.
I smiled to myself as I twirled gracefully from my sitting position on the bed. I would definitely need to go shopping for underwear, bras, and shoes, but June had left enough clothing that I could get through the summer before having to buy clothing that actually fit me.
Out of the box, I pulled free a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a tiny white tank top that had the words: Save A Virgin. Do Me Instead!, printed in bold red lettering across the front.
I was no longer a virgin; that was for sure. And as a testament to that, I was still sore, I realized as I lifted my leg to slip the pants on.
Beauty Page 3
