Growing up as a woman is hard enough with periods, rape, and having to look behind you every second as you walk to your car at night. However, Ana, my demon, she’s special. The American beauty standards always say “Be skinny! Be pretty! It’ll make you rich! It’ll make you happy!” It’s a sick but relentless mantra over every fashion magazine and skincare commercial. Do they really say that? No, but the pressure for perfect feminine skin and slim body to fit the clothing is all the same when it’s all you see for years straight.
I was fifteen when I met Ana. At first it was whispers in the back of my brain, “shhhh don’t eat, save it for later when no one’s watching.” “Do more sit-ups, be strong, we have to be strong!” The pounds started falling off my body. My frame became weak, pale, nonexistent of any form of life…but hey, atleast I kinda look like the girls in the Gucci fashion shows, or balenciaga. My mom & dad began to worry as the hair on my head fell, my period was gone, and hair grew everywhere else to stop me from shivering.
That’s when the cravings started. Mom would buy a pound of ground beef for burgers the next day and every time I’d sneak into the kitchen open the cling wrap and feast. It was a craving for the raw, pure blood, licking the packaging clean like an animal. Ana’s whispers got louder, “That’s not enough, I need more! More!” I knew this wouldn’t satisfy her. My mom would come downstairs and blame me, saying I threw it away, asking where the meat was since only the packaging remained in the trash. She had theories, that I flushed it, tossed the meat away from the house, even that I buried it. My mom was in tears after a few times of my feasts, thinking I tossed the food so no one could eat so we would all be skinny, so they’d all know my friend Ana.
I tried to tell them I eat, I’m not anorexic, only friends with Ana. They wouldn’t listen. They had set me up to see a doctor… that day. The doctor asked they stay in the room. For them to be there when they got me ready for what other teens call a “grippy sock vacation” as a joke. Just to make me “comfortable” and “have a trusted adult near by”. They started at my shoes, shirt, then my pants, underwear finally socks. Eventually I was naked. My bruising telling all of a young teen girl influenced by influencers with bodies even photoshop couldn’t achieve. I knew the real story though, and so did Ana.
They started snapping photos with a gown covering me asking me to lift it for photos of my bruising and body. I cried, my cravings were so bad, I was hungry. I was starving. I felt a lump in my throat. Was I going to sob? Was I about to throw up? “It’s time” a familiar whisper but this time louder than the others, not a friendly reminder of what I want or need, but a command. Ana. I wretched and fell to my knees, a thick sludge poured from my mouth, like a dark maroon black color. The doctor let out a gasp, my mother fell into my fathers arms and screamed “My baby!” The doctor opened the door and yelled at “SOMEONE GET A BED IN HERE, I HAVE A PATIENT VOMITING BLOOD”
I couldn’t help but smile, my cravings were going to be met. Nurses rushed into the room and I collected myself. The thick sludge began to bubble as nurses started checking me, not minding what was on the floor, they were to compassionate. As they began asking me questions making me sit on a now wheeled in bed the “blood” on the floor rose, it formed into what can only say a void spreading across the floor. Tentacles of blood rose and grew too, nurses started screaming, I locked the door. “Dinner time” a deep voice growled from the ooze. The tentacles with sharp & rugged ends piercing thru every living thing in that room. I laughed, smiled & was so very excited. Anas tentacles sucked the blood from every corpse there. When Ana was finished it fell into a small stream, thin ropes of blood rose into my mouth. I was ready. I let out a scream as Ana reentered my body. It felt so good to be full for once.
Security began banging on the door, I unlocked it and began crying, “The man ran that way! I locked the door when he left, he let me live, I don’t understand why. He killed my parents! Please! Stop him!” They believed me, since how could a 5’5” 87 pound girl do that, especially one that was just strip searched. As officers approached me I asked if I could just go home, that I didn’t want to relive any more trauma. They questioned me, I told them a man entered and just started stabbing I hid behind the doctors table. He saw me but I guess realizing security would soon be there he took off, he let me live. They told me they would be taking me to my aunts, my mothers sister, she was already in the foster system as a foster mom and was happy to take me.
I don’t think they’ll ever catch me, when you sell your soul to be young, skinny & free offering in return to do his bidding and feed his demons he’ll make sure you’re not caught. Only downside, I’m starting to get hungry again.