Elastic

She can feel it growing. She sits in bed at night as she feels it expand, exploring the darkest corners of her bony shoulders through to the harsh lines of her visible pelvis. Her body is made up of a thin torso screaming for food and scrawny legs threatening to never hold her again. She can feel it growing.

Its a hole in the very centre of her chest. Placed just above the base of her sternum, it sits just below the surface, getting wider and heavier. A sense of pride washes over her, as she remembers her last meal being over 24 hours ago.

The hole stops it’s journey outwards, her chest shielded by its feeling. Moments pass as she waits for it to sink. It takes longer than usual as she feels disappointment flow through her exposed bones. It starts to sink. Deeper and deeper, giving her that same high she feels every night, the pain touching her brain now cutting off any previous emotions. It continues to sink, further as she waits for it to stop just above the bottom of her soul. But it keeps sinking further. It falls deeper into uncharted territory filling her with a different kind of ache, perhaps the hole wants her to feel guilty. No, the hole decides on something harsher, loneliness. Shes alone, the hole draws attention to the fact that her life is filled with meaningless faces and blurry voices that never seem to acknowledge her suffering.

The hole stops. As the edges of the large cavity curl in, waiting anxiously for her to release, her brain clears itself of any attachment to the body it inhabits. She watches the pale body writhe in pain, tugging at its skin. She feels absolutely nothing.

Thoughts escape her grasps as they get sucked into the hole. Those thoughts don't belong to her, they live deep within the tired shell she was once brave enough to call her body.

Then comes the snap. Like elastic, the outskirts connected to the hole race down her chest, past her aching heart, through her muddied soul, hitting the bottom with a thud. Her brain is pushed back into place, controlled by the hole. She feels the emotions at the bottom pile on top of each other trying to get back up. They can't. She doesn’t let them, not today, but someday she’ll let go, they know it and so does she.

She comes down from her high, feeling the new ache of loneliness, soothing the area the hole covered. She closes the eyes of the unfamiliar vessel made up of flesh and bone, blocking any tears threatening to fall. She misses the now long gone hole. She thinks about how the hole doesn't feel real. She lies in a pool of thoughts attaching her unconscious mind further to the new feeling of loneliness, never wanting to let it go.