Phases of disgust

Trigger Warning; bulimia.

It doesn’t hurt when I morph shape but I do get a loud ringing in my ears.

The first time I was 5. Scared the crap out of my mother. Her, my brother and I sat down to a family meal. Tacos were our favorite. Something about creating your own masterpiece with all the individual bowls of fixings. A bowl of neon green glowed to me from across the table.

“Hey guys, I got some of that fancy avocado for you to try on your tacos, super authentic. And healthy!” mom chirps as she dishes. She places a half-moon on my plate that looks like lettuce but moves like a thick slice of cheese. I had yet to find a food I didn’t like and something that vibrant of a color must taste delicious. I broke a chunk off with my fingers and placed it in my mouth. Everywhere I bit down it disappeared. I felt like I ate a stick of dirt flavored butter. The sides of my mouth curled down in utter disgust. My mother looks at me and shakes her head as I reach for my napkin to spit the filth in. I attempt to force it down my throat and can feel it coming back up when... “Mom! Lilly is green!” my brother called out while pointing an accusing finger at me.

“Oh Lilly, are you going to be si-” Mom stops midsentence, trapping the words in her mouth with her hand.

I don’t hear either of them. A loud ringing encompasses me. My hands shoot to my ears. I reach my arm out and the appearance shocks me. I recoil it back as if burned. For a moment the ringing is forgotten. It’s neon green. An exact replica of the avocado. I hold my arm with my opposite hand and it feels moist and slippery to the touch. I take my index finger and push it into my other forearm as if lightly pressing a button on the microwave. I am appalled when my previously skin covered arm succumbs to the pressure of my little finger and an imperfect imprint emerges.

“Wahhhhh” I burst into tears. My mother barrels across the room and attempts to scoop me up in her arms. With her efforts of lifting me I slip through her grasp, no traction evident on my body except my scalp, finger and toe tips where my hair and nails once resided. These areas now elicit a leathery dark green shell, the same encases the neon fruit. At least the noise in my ears has subsided.

“Get my keys Bruce, we have to get Lilly to the hospital.”

•••

“I still don’t understand why we had to leave. All my friends are there.” My brother has not stopped nagging mom the entire 3-hour ride into the city.

“For the tenth time, I’m sorry Bruce. I would have loved to stay there too, but Mommy got a new job. So, we have to go.”

“You mean you got fired.”

“Bruce, stop it. Just think, I’m sure there will be lots of kids in the complex we are staying in.”

Mom guides our packed SUV into a space numbered 3C. I hop out and the smell of cigarettes on the air hits me as I gaze up the multicolored brick building. Mom walks up and holds my hand. “It looks neat mom; it will be like staying in a hotel. High up.”

“That’s the spirit my girl.”

We are almost able to see the floor of our hard used Honda when I turn around and there is a girl around my age standing there.

“Hi, my name is Jen.”

“Hi Jen, I’m Lilly.”

“Hi Lilly, are you moving in? I’m on 2C.”

“Yea, we are a floor above you, 3C .”

“That’s awesome! So far there are only boys who live in this building.”

“Lilly, dear will you please take this laundry stuff down to the laundry room?” Mom interrupts. “Who's your new friend?”

“Hey, I’m Jen. I can show you where the laundry room is.”

Off she skips, I look at my mom and then in the direction Jen went. My mom nods that it’s alright for me to follow and off I go, excited to have made a friend so soon. It has been hard making friends lately. Mom keeps such a close eye on me since my...episodes.

“Wait for me.” I yell, detergent in hand. We both giggle as we race to the building and hit the entrance. Instead of going up in the direction of our apartment, we go down.

“The laundry room is in the basement. Sometimes big Jim is down there when it’s cold out. He is no bother though; he just likes to sleep.” Jen explains to me matter of fact.

“Oh.” I say. Not really sure how to respond. I never seen a man sleeping in a laundry room before. We also never had to share a laundry room before.

We step into a cold damp room. Jen reaches up and pulls a string that illuminates the area. The sound of millions of fingernails on newspaper echoes throughout the room. The light seems to chase a live shadow into the back corners of the room behind the 2 washers and dryers. I rub my eyes in an attempt to improve my vision.

“Did you see something?” I ask Jen.

“Oh it’s just the roaches. They like the coolness down here. You have to make sure you wear your shoes when you do your laundry. One time my brother Billy came down here barefoot and one took his toe clean off.”

“Roaches?” I only ever heard about them in movies; I never saw one in real life.

“Yup, roaches. You can put your laundry soap on the shelf up there.” She points. “Right next to ours.”

“Okay.” I reply. Unsure I want to make the trek to the shelf and risk losing a toe to a roach. The fear of appearing uncool to my new friend wins out over my fear of the roaches. How bad can they be?

As I walk, my flip flops echo on the worn-down cement. I balance on my tippy toes as I get the detergent bottle to reach the shelf and give it a solid slide forward. I come back down on my feet and my heel meets something scaly and hard. I catch a glimpse of it as it scurries away from my foot. It sits still about a foot away just long enough for me to get a good look at it. Two long antenna protrude from a shiny brown shell waving at me as if to say hi.

I feel like a scream leaves my throat, but I can’t hear it over the ringing in my ears.

Oh no. Not in front of Jen. I haven't had an... episode...in front of anybody outside of my family. The doctors back home say I have an extreme reaction to feelings of disgust. Mom has gone broke attempting to find a cure for me.

I can see 2 large poles looming above me that move when I move. I realize the ringing in my ears is starting to subside when the poles start to wiggle with a “womp womp” sound.

Ouch, I realize with each wiggle I feel it in my scalp. Ew, they are attached to me!

“Ahhhh!” I turn around and am confronted with Jen, both her eyes and mouth as wide as beach balls. Well it was nice to have a friend for a couple minutes, I guess. I think to myself as I watch Jen’s back disappear into the darkness.

I go to wipe the tear from my eye and find my soft fingers are replaced with a brown spikey stem like appendages.

•••

“Lilly?” says Mrs. Barb, my 10th grade English teacher.

“May I please use the restroom?” I request.

“So she can scurry in the damp pipes,” a fellow student chimes and the class erupts into dull laughter.

Heat creeps up my neck to my face. I have morphed into multiple disgusting things since I was 11 and turned into the roach. A chick pea, a sour carton of milk, even a cigarette after a teenage attempt to redeem my coolness. They are still holding on to the stupid roach.

“That’s enough.” Mrs. Barb reprimands. “Of course Lilly, go ahead.”

I can’t get out of the room fast enough. I refuse to let anybody see me cry. Mom always tells me I was given these episodes for a reason…that I’m blessed. All the platitudes. I don't tell her but I stopped believing them years ago.

I shove the door to the girl’s bathroom open. I yank open a stall door. I stare down at the toilet water gently rippling.

“Splash!”

I break the tranquility with my mornings breakfast, shoving my fingers down my throat. Every heave brings pleasure. My stomach compresses to where I want it to be. I even hold my hand to my upper belly when I retch so I can feel my ribs. But then I must stop to breath and it returns to its normal squishy form. I’m sure to completely empty out all the eggs and bacon I ate this morning to pacify mom.

“Whew,” I sigh out and push off my knees and on to my butt and pull my knees in to my chest. For a brief period in time, as I expel my breakfast from my body, I banish burdens from my brain. My embarrassing uncontrollable mutating, lack of friends, will mom keep her job longer than a month? I leave it all in the toilet bowl.

As I sit and catch my breath I start to notice how the bottom of my belly pooches out. The spiral starts. If I wasn’t so lazy I could work out more and be thinner. Then maybe people would ignore my weird transformations and want to be my friend.

Argh…I stand up and swing open the metal stall door. I grip both sides of the sink and stare up at myself in the small mirror that hangs from the off-white tile wall of the bathroom. I can barely I meet my own gaze. My eyes are sunken in from lack of nutrition. Why can’t I be normal? Why can’t I be prettier? Why can’t I be thi-

My train of thought screeches to a stop with ear piercing ringing.

“Ahh,” I cover my ears with my hands regardless that the noise originates from within. What the hell am I morphing into now? Please not at school, please not at school, I plead.

The ringing starts to die down and I dare a look in the mirror to see what has appalled me so much to morph. Ugh am I going to be a smelly toilet, a urinal cake?

I look up and am completely shocked by what meets my gaze. I…I…I didn’t change. I look down at my hands, my usual dry hands with bitten down finger nails. I pull them up to my face and put my palms to my cheeks. I am me.