Vision of a Sorrow Eater

*TW, allusion to self harm and abortion

Here I am lying spread open on the table. Except I’m not on the table, I’m in my own bed because I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital and lie on the table. It costs twice as much to lie on the table as it does to lie in your own bed. On the table the procedure takes ten minutes. In my bed I will spend six hours riding waves of pain that feel like the ocean on its worst day.

There is someone to hold your hand if you lie on the table. There are women there. They tell you that everything is going to be okay and assure you they are doing everything right. They assure you that you have done everything right. There is nothing to worry about.

Here in my bed there is no one. I am left with my own thoughts. I'm afraid I have done the wrong thing. I’m afraid I have done it wrong. When I slid the pills in, I imagined that somehow they were going to soak up all my shame and sadness. That the mere act of following the direction in the pamphlet would convince me that things really are going to be okay. Instead, with each new wave and soaked pad I discover over and over again that things are not okay. Gushing like water, coming on like guilt felt after stealing. I’m stealing time somehow by doing this. I am cheating my own death.

Here comes the next wave. I wish I was a surfer. I had a friend name her baby after a character in Point Break. I could be like that. I could glide on top instead of feel everything to the full extent and hiss Jesus’s name twenty times in the process. I could be a cool guy like Patrick Swayze and take it easy. Here I go trying. Here I go cursing.

When I was six years old I had a fever high enough that I hallucinated. Mr. Peanut sat at the edge of the couch I was sleeping on and told me he was there to take me away. That I had died and he was visiting to collect my body. He assured me that even after I stopped seeing him it wouldn’t matter because I was definitely dead. I’ve been terrified of him ever since and I have had times of being convinced that he was right.

The girl who has appeared at the foot of my bed is not Mr. Peanut. Nothing is whimsical unless you're a child. This girl is a character from a horror film. Her impossibly thin arms are covered in the kind of tattered clothing only seen on screens and rarely in real life. The fabric is artificially distressed to give off an air of desperation.

Her eyes are like that too, desperate. It’s as if she soaked them in boric acid just in time for her close up. She couldn’t be more than twenty. I want to ask her how the hell she got into my room.

“You aren’t real.” I tell her instead, my voice tired from all the straining.

She reaches her pencil thin finger to the lump in the blankets where my foot is and prods it which I feel. I do feel it. The mind is a terrible thing.

“Feed me.” she says. She runs her full arm across the tousled fabrics. As the next wave has just started to build, I find the touch soothing. “Let me eat it.”

I shut my eyes and try to count to ten. The pain should be distracting me from her. Instead the pain is making it impossible to concentrate on anything else and tune her out.

“No, you aren’t real. You don’t exist.”

A sound bubbles out of her which I’m sure is meant to mimic laughter.

“You’ve fed me before. You know. Take this stone and put it under your tongue.”

A glittering clear piece of something shiny and chrome is sitting on my chest. It’s small enough to be swallowed.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe it.” I tell her.

“Feed me. I’m starving. It’s been such a long time. You’ll feel better. I’ll eat it for you.”

Those shiny watery eyes look on the verge of coming right out of her head. It might be the worst wave yet, my insides are flipping and twisting.

If it’s a hallucination, maybe I can dissolve it by being agreeable. I can put the stone under my tongue and it’s warm even though I haven’t held it in my hand. It fits well in my mouth and though it is small, I have no fear of swallowing it. The Sorrow Eater will take this stone when I’m done and she will swallow it and I will be free.

There’s enough heat from me that the stone burns quickly. I will have a sensitive spot on my tongue for weeks that will feel agitated every time I eat. It’s a wonder that as I pop it out and hand it to her, her pale skin isn’t scorched.

Without a pause she pops it into her own mouth and swallows with a greed so intense it is foreign.

“It doesn’t hurt as much now.”

I mutter and close my eyes again lightly to enjoy the absence of tension. When I open them again, she is gone.

I must have a terrible fever. Looking through the pamphlet, it says that anything above 101 is not normal. If I'm hotter than that, I will need to go to the emergency room. I can't afford that but I look for a tool anyway. There is that old stick of a thermometer in the bathroom cabinet which really ought to be cleaned. I certainly don’t have the time or the energy. Under the tongue, twenty seconds. A healthy 99.9. It must be the pain then that caused the conjuring.

It would be nice if she was real. I know the truth. I am the true eater and I have proven myself hungry time after time. Trading one problem for another, never satiated after they are resolved.

I don’t know it yet, but over two months later I will repeat this same experience. Except this time no one appears at the foot of the bed. It's a crying shame.