The familiar thump of his heart then it missed. The shakey way he feels after mingled with the sour taste and smell that seems to stay for days.
And the way his body knows and accepts it seemingly making it easier for him by just letting him do it.
No fighting just realse.
Peter stood up blinking away the black spots his brain still mad and unsatisfied at the amount he had been able to get up.
“It isn’t enough it’s never enough you FAT FUCK! You need to vomit until you bleed or no one will like you don’t you know skinny is in? Skinny is now skinny is everything and if you are not skinny! You will fail at life at everything. Nothing is going to mean anything unless you can count every single rib and you know it now vomit more or you’ll see it on your stomach tomorrow you cunt”
With two shaky fingers, he pushed down his throat gagging and choking tears welling up in his eyes from the force of it. Spits of bile with small bits of pasta were the only things that heaved up and still that heavy full feeling in his stomach was there.
“Ugh! Whatever you obviously ate too much and too fast you can’t do anything right! Guess you’ll just have to not eat AT ALL tomorrow unless you want to be bullied?”
Peter flushed washing his hands trying to get the smell off he didn’t want anyone to know. To smell like vomit would be a sin.
Everyone would know he was a failure.
He couldn’t even starve right he had to eat and eat and eat then vomit like a fat fucking cow because he himself could not do one thing right.
The lights were flicked off and he stumbled to bed energy gone used up in trying to satisfy everyone and everything all at once.
Morning. Eyes click open and in an instance, it is “What will you eat what won’t you eat?”
Hunger burns through him and he is reminded again he is not one of the good ones.
The best of the best do not get hungry. They don’t feel hunger.
Their body knows it’s not meant to eat so it doesn’t even bother telling them to eat.
Another reminder to Peter why he should skip breakfast.
Sitting up is another reminder.
Fat collects at his stomach and he is hyper-aware of the stickiness. The clinging of his skin.
The rolls.
The horror of his demise is the rolls.
The one thing he hates more than everything in the world.
He tried to slice it off once but didn’t get far.
A little tiny scar lays on the right side of his stomach. Going unnoticeable like most things in his life.
He stands stretching lifting his shirt up and the mirror sucks him in.
His face he picks at, his stomach he grabs and stretches and pulls and pinches.
He smiles at the way lightheadedness makes him floaty.
You are sick!!!!!!
The other voice screams and Peters smiles fades.
He stretches again pulling his arms up so that the skin is pulled tight! Over his bones and he can see them and feel them. Flowing to and through he can count them.
“See this! This is what you are aiming for soon Peter you will not have to stretch and stand tall you will just be and look like that. Just keep going you are nearly there. “
He walks out of his room for once feeling a tiny bit of joy.
His smiles faded and shock takes over him.
Food
Food is on the bench and May is standing next to it.
It’s funny how once you were deathly afraid of guns and kidnappers and now you have panic attacks over food of all things.
Food that is meant to give you life.
He gulps down his fear and smiles again not wanting to anger or hurt May.
He eats the food feeling as if he is weighed down by it. Pulling him down to the surface and his mind screams for him to puke and vomit and empty himself.
He has to leave before he does he cannot think of his whole entire body.
But on the way to school it gets the better of him (it always does) and he finds a bathroom panicking because he has never ever done this in such a public place.
What if someone here’s? He asks himself but soon he comes to know that no one actually cares! Everyone would rather forget it happened.
So he does what he does and he feels glee at least that he won’t have to be angry later that he ate something in the morning.
But just to be sure he walks the rest of the way to school. Even if it makes him late for the first time in a while he has to make sure he burns those cals.
It tastes so good he cannot stop he cannot.
Food is everywhere he is food.
He has to shove it down his throat more and more and more it demands this and that and that and this. Never ever stop this feeling
This whole bodily sigh of relief
Fuel!!! His brain calls out screaming almost crying with joy. The boy has finally decided to stop killing his body to feed the brain to nourish it.
But the feeling quickly dissipates slamming back down instead with a dripping guilt.
“All that hard work gone stuffed. You just ate 3!!! Fucking weeks' worth of cals how could you?? How!? How could you really how could you?! You disgust me and I hope you know everyone wishes you were gone everyone knows what you do everyone is disgusted by you. They all pretend to like you and it’s sad you think they actually do!”
A gasp and a shakey sob and tears flood his face as food is shoved down the bin packets and crumbs are scattered across the carpet Peter jumps up with a sick feeling his body almost holding onto every last calorie.
And his Brain sighs in disappointment as fingers and pushed down his throat and vomit is splattered onto the toilet all that food that it needed leaving and going away.
And Peter can’t help but scream in frustration.
He knows logically he needs to eat.
But he can’t he can’t just let himself do that.
He cannot.
He wants to get better he wants not to feel like shit all the time
“But if you get better you will never ever be skinny enough. Or good enough for that matter if you get rid of me you will never get me back and you will lose ALL your dieting ability do you want that do you? Do you want to become an obese fat person in a chair when you are older being judged by EVERYONE around you just because you wanted to feel better? You make me sick”
Peter cannot win.
And his hands dig out the food from the trash and it repeats.
Shove food down throat then fingers over and over again in a never-ending cycle.
He is noticed.
Recognised.
Tony for one.
“There’s vomit in the bathroom wanna tell me why?” That’s what it had started at. Simple questions, a lingering feeling or reason. They didn’t really know at first just an assumption.
Peter shook it away. “Sick”
Or “choked”
Or “Oh it’s not vomit I had food on my shirt”
Until tony started shaking his head
“I know you’re lying Peter everytime you eat you rush off to go puke I know what you’re doing and you better listen up. Doing that is extremely dangerous-“
Peter faded his voice away sick of adults telling him it was dangerous.
It was his choice what to do with his body not Tony’s.
May made him more upset.
She would break down crying asking begging him to tell her why he was doing this to himself begging him to stop.
Another voice added to the lot.
It was like push shove and pull.
So many different voices wanted all different things there was no way to satisfy them all.
There was only one true way.
To not eat to get slim.
Because the pain of that numbed him to everything else and made the voices seem smaller.
“See?” He would later say “I can do something look! Ribs I am getting skinny you all doubted me you all said food we need food but really all you need is discipline and some self-awareness I don’t need anything”
Oh how wrong he was.
He would regret it later he really would.
Later during the 8th time, he would purge in one day not able to control the begging for food blood seeped out spotting through his vomit.
The first sign he was in danger.
The second was a wave of faintness his body beginning to shake and curl in his eyes fluttering his body and making him vomit not his fingers.
He fainted his head hitting the toilet then sliding down onto the floor.
He awoke minutes later the only thing he noticed was the way his chest stuck up.
Not the throbbing in his head.
Not the blood-stained fingers.
Not the cramps in his lower legs that were begging for water
And definitely not the way his heart was HAMMERING hard trying desperately to keep him alive even though his brain was screaming saying
“I’m sorry but there’s nothing left to eat we have to start on the muscles!”
Peter was deteriorating and he didn’t know it. He didn’t even care.
So when Peter collapsed a smug smile on his face as if he had achieved something great no one knew what to do.
His limp body had fallen head cracking loudly into the tiles Tony was grateful they were so close to medical attention.
He shouldn’t have been.
Later when Peter woke up with a tube in his nose knowing that he was being pumped full of food and calories he didn’t have the energy to exercise he saw only one option.
And May screamed and sobbed. Tony’s face a white colour never really experienced this level of loss ever.
May had. And her heart felt like it was being ripped from her chest. And she begged not for this to be real how could it be real? Why was it always her why?
The way too. It was horrific.
A white bedsheet hung up from the ceiling his limp body still swaying side to side his pale face growing slightly blue with the lack of oxygen.
And even though Tony yelled and shouted for them to cut Peter down it was too late. He was long gone a slight smile on his face a peaceful look and that’s the only thing May later be grateful for.
That he had stopped hurting. And that he was finally resting.
And the site of Peters's stomach, His concave stomach, his bones poking out twisted Tony’s mind.
And he began to hear slight whispers in the back of his mind every time he took a bite of food.
Do you think you deserve that do you? Do you think people like you should be allowed to eat?
You are nothing
You didn’t save him
You didn’t save anyone
Put the food down
You should be ashamed of yourself for eating when he NEVER could!
And the cycle continues.