Wires

Clarissa was dying to fit into a size 4 before her office Christmas party.

She had been battling the bulge since she was fourteen and a size fourteen. She had done everything: bingeing and purging, anorexia, diet pills, the ThighMaster, even enemas. Now, at twenty-nine, after all the damage she had done to herself in the name of becoming smaller, she decided that maybe, this time around, she would be kinder to her body. She joined Weight Watchers. She ate right. She worked out. She got herself down to a size 8.

For a while, it worked.

Her old jeans slid off her hips. She started wearing tighter clothes and got the kind of attention she had always wanted. For the first time in years, she began to feel beautiful. Desired. Visible.

Then the unthinkable happened.

She hit a plateau.

She could not lose another pound. She changed her diet plan. Nothing. Worked out five days a week, then seven. Nothing. Ate even less. Nothing. She went to her doctor, and he gave her the answer she most wanted to hear.

“Maybe this is the size you’re meant to be.”

Fuck you, she thought.

Every day after that, she looked in the mirror and swore she was getting bigger. Her hips looked wider. Her stomach looked softer. Fat seemed to be creeping back over her body in real time, colonizing her inch by inch. December was closing in. If she was going to fit into a size 4 before the party, she was going to have to do something drastic.

Something crazy.

So she did.

She took some vacation time, told everyone at work she was going to Antigua, and used the Antigua money to pay for a procedure no decent doctor would perform on someone who did not absolutely need it. It took a few extra Benjamins and a few doctors with flexible morals, but eventually she found the right man for the job.

A few hours later she came out dizzy, swollen-faced, and clutching a slip of paper with Vicodin scrawled across it.

At the pharmacy, she tried to ask for it.

All that came out was a wet, distorted sound.

The pharmacist stared.

Clarissa tried again, prying her mouth open just enough for the metal to glint at the corners. The smell of iron rode out on her breath. A thread of bloody drool slipped from her mouth, tapped the prescription in her hand, and clung there for a second before breaking.

The pharmacist recoiled, snatched the paper from her, and told her to sit down.

For you see, Clarissa had wired her jaw shut.

She knew the quickest way to lose weight was not to eat anything. Duh.

An hour later she was back home, half-drugged and weirdly happy. Thus began her three-week descent into thin-dom.

At first, it was miserable.

She lived mostly on juice. When she felt brave enough, she left the apartment and bought fruit to make smoothies. She was terrible at making them. Half the time they came out so acidic they made her stomach revolt. And if it came up instead of going down, she was in real trouble, because, well, her jaw was wired shut.

So sometimes she had to swallow her pride.

And swallow her chunks.

That part made her violent with anger. Not because it hurt, though it did, but because she counted it as consumption. Every accidental mouthful felt like failure.

Still, the days passed. She got better at the smoothies. She stopped taking the Vicodin. She worked out normally again. The fat began to fall off her body. She watched herself sharpen.

Her legs grew toned. Her stomach flattened enough to hint at a two-pack. Her ribs began to show. Her arms no longer jiggled. Her ass no longer wiggled.

She was losing weight.

She was happy.

But she was happy for another reason, too.

Dan from accounting.

Dan was one of those men every office eventually grows: handsome, easy, broad-shouldered, effortlessly desired. The kind of man women whispered about and, if the rumors were to be believed, occasionally passed around in supply closets. Clarissa had never been one of those women.

That was the wound.

Dan was always warm with her. He smiled at her. Had lunch with her. Dinner once. A movie another time. He remembered things she said. Asked questions. Looked at her when she spoke as though the answer mattered. But Clarissa, being Clarissa, mistook all of that for almost-interest. Near-desire. The kind of attention a man gave a woman he might sleep with if she were just a little prettier, a little smaller, a little more worth wanting.

Rumor had it he wasn’t into thick girls.

That rumor had lived in her for months.

So now, with her body finally whittled down to something she thought might earn his appetite, she intended to collect.

By the time the Christmas party arrived, Clarissa fit into the size 4.

She found the perfect black dress. It hugged her breasts, her little waist, the round curve of her ass. It dipped low in the front to show cleavage and lower in the back to reveal the spray of freckles over one shoulder blade that resembled, to her mind, the constellation of Dionysus. On her feet she wore sleek red pumps. A thin gold chain circled her neck. Pale lips. Sharp cat-eye liner over her big, round hazel eyes.

She looked expensive.

She looked edible.

While admiring herself, and not entirely innocently, she forgot about her appointment to have the wires removed.

She remembered too late.

By the time she caught a cab to the doctor’s office, he had already left for the day. She stood outside the locked door in her black dress and red heels, jaw wired shut, and nearly screamed.

But that wasn’t going to stop her.

She looked sexy. She felt good. She wanted Dan.

She was going to that fucking party.

The reaction when she walked in almost made the whole ordeal worth it.

“Clare? Oh my God.”

“Is that you?”

“You look amazing.”

“Antigua did you right.”

She smiled carefully, only showing her front teeth, and moved through the room on a tide of compliments. The wires weren’t obvious unless she opened too wide. As long as she kept her mouth controlled, she could pass.

At the bar she spotted him immediately: black jacket, broad back, an ass that refused to quit.

She touched his shoulder blade and let her fingers drift across it.

“Hello, Dan,” she said through her teeth.

He turned, stared, then did a full double take.

“Holy shit, Clare.”

He grinned like he genuinely meant it. Then he wrapped his arms around her, lifted her clean off the ground, and spun her once. Clarissa laughed behind closed lips, drunk on the fact that he was touching her at all.

They ordered vodka tonics and started talking.

Dan complained about accounting, about work, about half the idiots in the building. He told her he’d missed her. Told her she looked incredible. Then, softer, while his eyes drifted over the back of her dress, he smiled and said, “You know, I always liked that little cluster of freckles on your shoulder. The one that looks like a constellation.”

Clarissa blinked.

“The constellation of Dionysus,” he added, almost shyly.

He had noticed.

Of course, because she was Clarissa and therefore committed to misunderstanding every decent thing done to her, she barely heard him. While he was seeing her, she was imagining peeling his clothes off with her teeth.

When he took her hand and asked if she wanted to come with him to the buffet, she followed without hesitation.

The company had clearly blown money this year. The buffet was obscene. Wagyu sliders. Dumplings. Poke spoons lined up on ice. Spring rolls. Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. Buffalo wings. Bacon-wrapped scallops. Mini pizzas. Cupcakes with towers of buttercream.

Dan loaded a plate and asked if she wanted anything.

She shook her head.

Then her stomach lurched.

In between getting dressed and touching herself to thoughts of Dan, she had forgotten to drink her dinner. She punched herself lightly in the gut, as though she could bully the hunger back into submission.

Dan kept talking beside her, picking up a buffalo wing with his fingers, tearing meat from it with slow distracted bites.

And then it happened.

Clarissa could smell everything.

Not just smell it. Hear it. Taste it. Feel it pressing in on her from every direction. The buttercream on the cupcakes. The garlic on the asparagus. The hot iron tang of the rare Wagyu. The vinegar sting of the wing sauce. The sweet salt of teriyaki and soy clinging to dumplings. Her stomach gurgled so loudly it seemed to boom in her ears.

Dan’s voice began to drown.

All she could hear was chewing.

The wet smack of gums. The tearing of meat. The grinding of teeth. The obscene intimacy of people eating while she stood there with her mouth tied shut like punishment.

The sounds dug into her.

The hunger made her shake.

She stared at Dan as he licked sauce from his thumb and felt something ugly and ravenous rise up inside her. It wasn’t just hunger anymore. It was humiliation. Want. Envy. Rage.

As he lifted the last buffalo wing toward his mouth, Clarissa snatched it from his hand.

Dan blinked.

Clarissa shoved it toward her own mouth and tried to force her jaw open.

“NNNNGGH—”

Pain lit through her face.

The wing slipped from her hand. Blood spattered from the corners of her mouth. Still she bent after it, desperate, sucking wing sauce through the tiny gaps in her teeth.

“Sss. Ssssss. Sss.”

She got some of it. Enough to taste vinegar, heat, salt. Enough for little strands of chicken to catch against the outside of the wire.

Dan’s whole expression changed.

“Clarissa,” he said, stepping toward her. “Hey. Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong with your mouth?”

The people nearest the buffet went quiet.

“Clare?”

“Is that wire?”

“Oh my God, she’s bleeding.”

Clarissa felt herself drop straight through time.

She was fourteen again. Huge again. Ridiculous again. Everyone was looking. Sauce on her face. Blood on her lip. Their voices blurred until it sounded like laughter inside her skull.

And there was Dan.

Not even Dan, really. Just the final witness. The last pair of eyes to watch her fail.

Her stomach cramped. Her head pounded. All she wanted was for the hunger to stop.

And she could not eat a damn thing.

She felt the gaze of her coworkers devouring her.

She began to crash out.

Her heartbeat thudded in her temples. The smell of food thickened until it felt alive. Her hands shook. Dan, poor stupid Dan, reached for her forehead with a napkin, concern plain on his face.

“Clare, honey—”

“GET OFF ME. I’M FUCKING STARVING.”

She slapped his hand away so hard the napkin fell.

Then she dropped to the floor, shoved through the bodies around her, and lunged for the cutlery.

Someone shouted.

Clarissa grabbed a fork.

With one hand she hooked her fingers into the inside of her cheek and yanked it outward. With the other she drove the fork into the wires lacing her jaw together. The metal slipped. Scraped. Caught. She stabbed again. The prongs skidded off tooth and gum. On the third jab they snagged.

That was the feeling.

Not clean slicing. Not simple tearing.

Snagging.

Like chicken wire catching fabric and refusing to let go. Like hooked metal grabbing the slick inside of her cheek and dragging it with it. The wire bit into her fingers, her gums, the tender wet lining of her mouth. Blood came all at once — hot, immediate, abundant — spilling over her chin and down onto her breasts.

The room erupted.

People screamed. Someone yelled for an ambulance. Tammy from finance tried to grab the fork, and Clarissa whipped around so wildly Tammy caught a slice across her hand and shrieked backward.

Clarissa kept going.

The first section of wire snapped with a metallic ping. It recoiled into her cheek, pricked skin, snagged flesh, opened it wider. She moved to the other side, hands slick with spit and blood, jerking and sawing until that side caught too. The wire dragged through the inside of her mouth, carving thin ragged openings that widened every time she pulled. It ripped free from her bottom lip on the way out.

“Ahh—AHHH—”

By then her mouth felt peeled open. Loose. Wet. Full of salt and iron and stringy warm red. She could feel little flaps of torn flesh shifting every time she breathed.

When she was done, her mouth looked less like a mouth than ruined fabric — something delicate shredded, soaked through, and barely hanging together.

She didn’t care.

She had finally been freed.

She staggered back to the buffet.

With blood-slick hands she grabbed a buffalo wing and tore into it.

The broken ends of wire still lodged in her gums bent and scraped deeper as she chewed, scoring her open wounds, ticking against her teeth. She moaned anyway. Then she grabbed bacon-wrapped scallops by the fistful and stuffed them into her mouth.

Relief flooded her so fast she looked like a Victorian child freed from their confining corset..

She smiled — fishy, bacony, bloody.

She did not care that people were screaming. She did not care that Dan stood frozen, white as paper. She did not care that Linda from Sales projectile-vomited across half the billing team.

No.

Fuck all of them.

She looked over at Dan, eyes wet and shining, and held out a piece of Wagyu toward him like she was flirting, like she was offering communion, like this was somehow still seduction.

He stared at her in horror.

Clarissa smiled wider and bit into it herself.

You know why? She turned left.

“Oh, Look Dan! Scallop–oooh and there’s bacon on them!”

And nothing — nothing — matters more than bacon on fucking scallops when you’ve been starving.