Flab

FLAB

If walls could talk. They knew I wasn't free. I knew it.

I sat and looked through his Instagram. I couldn’t help it. I needed a reminder of what I fell in love with. His posts were inspirational, they made him seem perfect, for me. He was lean, tanned, and had nice smile with nevertheless insecure eyes. They were insecure. That’s what drew me in. He was insecure on the inside to match my insecurity on the outside.

“Hey you,” he said as he set foot inside. I wasn’t done looking at the pictures, but now I needed to look at the man in front of me. It was the same man. Lean, tanned, but those eyes were no longer insecure: they were vicious.

“What have you been up to today?” he said as he entered and put his duffle bag on the floor. He took seat on the couch, sitting and closing his eyes. He sat and I looked at him. This man who I had known for a little over a year, but who, with each passing day, I felt I had just met.

“Just scrolling through social media,” I answered, truthfully. I didn’t know why I felt so compelled to be honest with him. I had no reason to. Eugene hadn’t been honest about anything.

It wasn’t the longest drive ever. It was a beautiful, scenic drive. The lush green trees greeted me. I waved at them with my eyes, Eugene didn’t. We didn’t say much during our three-hour drive up to San Luis Obispo.

“Are you hungry?” Eugene asked before we arrived at his parent's house. I assumed we’d be having dinner there. I assumed wrong once again.

“I am,” I answered. I had been hungry since meeting him.

We stopped at a quaint yet chic little restaurant that blended both French and Thai cuisine. It was the strangest fusion I had seen in a restaurant, but I didn’t argue with Eugene's choice. I never did.

“Welcome to Nelly’s, I’m Jeff, I’ll be your server today. Can I start you off with something to drink?” Jeff asked us both. I hadn’t looked at the menu yet, but I needed a drink. And for once, a Diet-Coke wasn’t going to do.

“Can I please have a Pinot Grigio,” I ordered. Eugene quickly shot me a judgmental look. I didn’t care. I wanted that Pinot more than anything in the world and he wasn’t going to stop me from ordering it. “For you, sir?” Jeff asked Eugene, though I was certain they were both around the same age.

“I’ll take a Whiskey neat,” Eugene ordered, driven by his strict diet. An unbending diet.

As Jeff wrote down the order, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him. Not because he was more attractive than Eugene; if anything, Jeff was his conventional inferior. Three inches smaller, somewhat stocky, and at least a decade older—Jeff was everything from the definition of male physique perfection. And that’s why I couldn’t stop looking at him. Jeff was just a man working for something unknown, but something real. Jeff was real.

I ordered a burger. A juicy, raw burger with extra bacon and cheddar on it, not low-fat American cheese. Eugene ordered the steak, medium-rare, with all veggies substituted for the sweet potato mash. Eugene had argued with Jeff over the substitution, which went against the restaurant’s policy of no menu alterations. It was a two-minute argument that Eugene eventually won by reiterating the old as time, infuriating mindset of “The customer is always right.” I was deeply embarrassed. Eugene's judgement burned my mouth as I took my first bite of the burger, its bloody and oiliness dripping onto the table. Eugene looked at me with utter disgust, the same way I looked at myself in the mirror the same day I met him.

I remembered that day like it was yesterday. I was curious to know more about Eugene after scrolling through his Instagram, after I had accepted his request for his message to go into my primary inbox instead of spam.

“So what are your fitness goals?” Eugene asked me. As if I had ever given them second-thought. My only goal was to be able to keep up that conversation without sounding like an ugly, sack of wobbly flesh.

“I’d like to get lean, not buff, or bulky. I just want to be able to look in the mirror, and feel good about the way I look. I don’t want to become some gym rat or become consumed with a gym and lose all notion of a social life. If that gives you an idea.” Eugene just nodded and smiled, but I could see his own insecurity, which mimicked the one in his tone. I was internally insecure and talked an opposite game; Eugene couldn’t hide his fear as good as me.

“I looked at your acting reel, by the way. You’re really good at what you do,” Eugene said to me, the finishing touch on getting me to sign up for his program. His life program.

Eugene was really good at what he did, too, because things changed. Things changed as his life program changed. Things changed as my life program changed into his. Things changed as my goals changed. Things changed as my body changed.

The drive over to his parents seemed almost as long as the drive from Burbank to San Luis Obispo, even though it was only ten more minutes on the road.

“You want to stop for a drink or something?” Eugene asked as we drove past a liquor store. “Your parents have water at their place, right?” I asked him, not trying to sound sarcastic, though I did.

“I want something to drink,” Eugene said as we pulled up to the liquor store on the side of the road. Eugene was notorious about voicing what he wanted. It was easier for him to make it seem like what he wanted was what everyone else wanted. I believed him, too. Every time.

“Shocked they have that here,” I pointed out as he grabbed a CBD-infused drink. I shouldn’t have been too shocked, as I found Kombucha, my own, fancy drink of preference. But our ten- minute drive to his parents' house had gotten us farther from any semblance of civilization. Eugene popped open the drink and started slurping away, a pet peeve of mine; I found it extremely tacky to consume a beverage before paying for it. I had already gotten on Eugene’s case about drinking so much of that specific drink, even if it alleviated his joint pains just like Kombucha eased my digestive ailments.

“It’ll be cash only if it’s under ten dollars,” the cashier, an overweight, gruff, bald man answered. Eugene tried giving him a hard time, mostly because that man represented everything Eugene hated in one person, but I didn’t want to squander anymore patience watching Eugene pick petty fights. I handed the cashier a ten-dollar bill and let him keep the change.

We drove for five more minutes, maybe seven. I wasn’t accurately counting. All I could count was every sigh exiting my mouth with each sip Eugene took of that drink. I suddenly wished he had found the time to replace his car radio when it was broken into earlier that week, instead of finding the time to go buy a new treadmill. We arrived as Orion’s Belt welcomed us. I had never seen it, and I had never thought of it as something I would have enjoyed seeing, but it was a beautiful, unexpected sight. It compensated for the next sight.

“You’re late,” said a a thin, yet sculpted, pixie-cut old troll as she opened the door for us. It was Eugene’s mother, Katya. She was wearing a brown gown that only added to the neutral tone of the environment. The inside of the house was dim-lit, and I couldn’t locate the exact lighting source by simply entering the house. Whatever the light source was, it demanded we walk deeper into that abyss to find it. We walked into the living room, a man was sitting down on the floral couch, watching TV in his black PJ’s which contrasted the light in that room. His muscles were protruding through the black, long-sleeves shirt and silky, black pants. This pair’s muscles contrasted the wrinkles in their faces.

“Are you going to hug your dad or what?” Katya said as Eugene just looked at the man, afraid. Eugene had always been afraid of his father. And it made sense the moment I stopped to look around. There were pictures of Eugene and his family. The father resembled a David Hasselhoff in his younger years with Tom Cruise’s face. The mother had Jane Fonda’s body with Jamie Lee Curtis face, but minus Jamie’s kind smile. None of these two partners in crime smiled. Eugene’s brother had the physique of Taylor Lautner in the Twilight movies, with the face Timothee Chalamet—it was the oddest sight ever, one I never thought I’d see. Eugene, on the other hand, was scrawny in every picture, he had Timothee Chalamet’s body minus its gracefulness, instead resembling that of Christian Bale’s in The Machinist. Eugene was a fragile child and teenager in every way.

“Where’s the restroom,” I asked as I looked at Eugene embrace his father, Tom. Tom squeezed Eugene and even though Eugene now had a sturdy physique of his own, I felt like I could hear his spinal cord squeak as his father squeezed harder and tighter. It was painful to look at.

“Down the hall, second door to the right,” Katya said without even looking at me, she just looked at her youngest son and husband, impatient for some unknown reason. I made my way down the dark hall. I could somewhat make out the pictures on the wall, but not enough to see the shapes of anyone in them, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

I sat for a few minutes, finally getting a chance to go, courtesy of the Kombucha. I scrolled through my phone as I did, seeing pictures of Eugene’s fitness account on Instagram. Eugene looked happy in all his pictures, shirtless or not. He looked confident in all his pictures. He looked like he hadn’t looked in months. I got up and had to flush the toilet twice. I washed my hands, using the yellow bar soap with a hair on it. It was a slightly disgusting sight in there—there were brown towels, the walls had a yellowish tinge that seemed like it started off white, and the floor had small black stains that had been sloppily wiped off. I questioned everything about that bathroom. I also didn’t want to.

I looked in the mirror. Everything looked flatter after sitting on the toilet, but I just wanted it to always look flat. It had for months after meeting Eugene. I had followed all his diet plans and exercise routines and even recipes he used when shredding that were only customized for his body. But then, Eugene and I started meeting outside the gym, at the movies, for dinner at restaurants without nutritional menus, the bar. We did the bar a lot. Then we moved in together, and rarely cooked at home, and got drive-thru dinners every once in a while, and then two to three times a week. And then I booked a leading role on an indie feature and I had to eat what was available for craft services or the indulgent dinners they offered as payment for twelve-hour days. And then the hours I spent with Eugene became shorter and shorter and so did any commitments we made to each other.

I looked at my stomach for another minute, feeling my way. It was flat. That remained. I had never had a flat stomach during my adult life, and only briefly as a child before becoming pudgy and eventually obese. It was flat, until I reached my belt, I tucked my hand down my pants, feeling the flab. It was my flabby proof of my life before meeting Eugene. Eugene helped me get rid of everything the flab filled. Eugene filled the flab with muscle, and briefly, abs.

Eugene filled every other part of my body with invisible joys and temporary pleasures, which he conned me into thinking were permanent when I signed his contract. I looked at my stomach. I touched my stomach. I pulled on my stomach violently, wanting to rip off the flab, pulling and hoping and not caring about any blood that might leave my body during the extraction. I pulled and pulled. If walls could talk.

I walked back into the living room. Eugene was standing in place as his mother stood next to the father, who was intent on the movie he was watching, Day of the Living Dead. Eugene stood still, frozen, still afraid. Katya looked at me, with disgust. Tom looked at the TV. I stood there, waiting for our next destination that night.

I couldn’t sleep for long that night. I kept tossing, and turning. Eugene had no problem sleeping, as I turned to look at his naked body next to mine, covered with a white sheet. I tossed, and turned, and then, I reached for his sheet. I started pulling on it. We hadn’t had sex in over a month, and maybe it was the setting. Maybe we just needed a different, darker setting to hide our imperfections. Our ugliness.

I removed the sheet, and I saw it, erect for the first time in months. I looked at it for a while, just staring. I moved to touch it, my hand trembling. I just wanted to touch it, even if for a few seconds. I did. I felt it. I felt it’s skin, the warmth and veins. He hadn’t trimmed in a while. I loved that and he didn’t. I felt it for a few seconds because it felt nostalgic, then I decided to feel it in my mouth. It felt even warmer in my mouth, it tasted good.

A different taste, almost foreign with the passing of the months, but still tasted good. I went in, in and out and around the tip. In and out and around the tip. I played with the tip, it was his favorite part of me going down on him. My tongue reminded Eugene of what he loved about me, one of the few remaining things.

I did this for a few more minutes as my hand joined my mouth in the action, covering whatever area my mouth couldn’t. I looked up at Eugene, he neither smiled or made much of a facial expression as his eyes were closed. I continued, but I also continued to look at his face. His eyes were closed, but nothing came out of his face; not satisfaction, dissatisfaction, or objection. He was just there.

I went deeper again. In and out and around and back to the tip, maneuvering my way around his tip over and over, he loved this. Eugene had told me time and time again how he loved me working his tip. He loved this part the most.

“Are you done yet?” Eugene said as I turned up to look at him again, his eyes closed. I stopped and scooted over back to my side of the bed as Eugene laid there, naked. Even though I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, I was also naked. Naked and ashamed.

We woke up the next morning to no sounds. I turned to look at Eugene, still sleeping.

It was 8 a.m. and the wedding was at 10.

“Eugene,” I said as I shook him. No response.

I shook him again, a slight nudge, which was followed with him pulling my side of the sheet over his head. “Eugene,” I whispered this time. I had no idea why I felt inclined to whisper—his parents' bedroom was nowhere near ours.

“It’s almost 9,” I said, embellishing the truth. It was only 8:06. “And…”Eugene answered in a groggy. “And? It’s your brother’s wedding.”

“He’ll be late,” Eugene said with utter conviction.

“To his own wedding?” I whispered again, not baffled. Tardiness to important life events seemed a trend in that family. “Let me sleep,” said Eugene as he pulled the blanket over his head.

I laid there am for another fifteen minutes, then I got up and put on my clothes for that day. If Eugene wasn’t going to put in some effort into impressing his family, I was. I didn’t know why I cared. But I did. I walked back into the same bathroom as the night before. I sat—the Kombucha had done its job. I sat and looked through my phone. All these fitness influencers kept popping up, so I liked their pictures. I did this every morning. Eugene’s page soon popped up. I looked through it, every gym video. Every shirtless video. Every inspirational video. Every video that showed that light back in his eyes. I hadn’t seen it in so long.

I got up, flushed the toilet and everything that exited my body. I washed the filth off my hands and looked in the mirror. I looked in the mirror like I did every morning. I looked pulled up my shirt, it was just as flat as the night before. I made my way down, down my pant’s waistband and onto the flab. I touched it, feeling it between my fingers, like every morning. I felt its touch and suddenly became angry, infuriated. Like every morning. I pulled on it. I pulled and pulled and pulled and didn’t care of the blood that would follow, if only it be pulled off. I only the walls of every bathroom I had set foot in since meeting Eugene could talk. They would be able to explain all the horror they saw through my every pull, every morning.

I walked back into the living room. I couldn’t believe the sight. Katya was there, in grey sweat pants and a white tank-top. She was holding silver dumbbells and watching a workout routine on their widescreen TV. “Good morning, Katya,” I said as I looked at the sweat running down her forehead, I could see her arms muscles protruding from her wrinkly skin. She wouldn’t stop. Up and down and up and down. Up and down. She was barely breathing. She was far too invested in her workout routine.

“Good morning,” I reiterated. I wasn’t going to be ignored by two members of the same family in one morning. “What’s good to it?” Katya answered. Unlike her son, she was brutally honest. “I was wondering if…”the question almost got stuck in my throat, despite it not being anything out of this world. “I was wondering…” "I was wondering if I could finish my workout in peace,” Katya said as she refused to break eye-contact from the female instructor leading the prerecorded workout routine.

I made my way into the kitchen, hoping to find what I was looking for. I saw the coffee pot, and the coffee, but I was too afraid to look through the cabinets for a mug. If only the walls could talk, they would warn me to not touch what didn’t belong to me in the first place. But the walls couldn’t talk and my caffeine withdrawal took precedent over any perceived indiscretion by Eugene’s parents. Besides, I already knew my sheer presence there was an indiscretion in and of itself.

I walked outside, because I wanted to avoid Katya seeing me drink the coffee, and I wanted to avoid her altogether. It was cold outside, not the coldest day, but not remotely warm. I could see the leaves rustling. I could almost see the wind carrying some inaudible message as the rustling got louder. Then I saw him. Tom. He was running, shirtless, sweating in grey sweat pants that outlined every dotted part of his body.

I looked at him run, and I couldn’t stop myself from doing so—it was hypnotizing. It wasn’t in a sexual way at all—I wasn’t that frustrated and I wasn’t into men twice-my-age. Tom was just, hypnotizing. Just like Katya. I was suddenly feeling like a coyote’s prey, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to run away.

Eugene got up past nine. Even so, no one seemed fazed, because no one in that house had a greater sense of urgency than me. Katya finished her workout and then proceeded to shower. Tom also just showered. Eugene showered third. They ate nothing. They were surviving off the sheer desire to look desirable. I needed more to survive.

The drive over to the chapel felt as long as the drive to San Luis Obispo. And it was just as quiet. We had maybe two exchanges that day, one of which included Eugene knocking on the bathroom door, demanding I step away from the mirror to let him in. Eugene had caught me in the act one day early into our relationship, and he had reminded me of the turning point ever so often. I didn’t need the reminder; I was excellent at reminding myself.

It was cold. Even when I started Eugene’s routine, even when I started to change my body to match his, even when I felt fire running through my body every time I saw Eugene, cold remained in me and that weather did not help.

The wedding took place at a chapel next to a closed down creamery. A random location considering Eugene was both lactose intolerant and had never shown an interest in eating a dessert on either of our birthdays.

We sat outside, waiting. I saw more and more people arrive. Tall, or moderately-sized, slender, chiseled, or bulky physiques. I couldn’t fight off the cold, and I couldn’t fight off the cold I felt from Katya every time she looked at me. It was like she could see me, see everything below my clothing, below my skin, below my belt. It’s like she could see the flap.

We sat and waited. Eugene’s brother was nowhere in sight. We sat for fifteen minutes, almost twenty. Just sitting and not speaking. It was an odd feeling, a somewhat awful feeling. Looking at all those bodies, they were beautiful and ugly all the once. I could’t explain it. Eugene wasn’t saying anything, he sat. Tom sat. Everyone sat. Everyone sat except Katya. She just kept looking. Then her look turned into a furious glare.

Short, stout, overweight, and sweaty men and women with pudgy, puffy children started to trickle in. The men were poorly groomed, some were partially bald or completely hairless, and their jeans were tattered or their wrinkled slacks were tasteless to Katya’s palette. Her furious glare intensified when a bald, fat, and bigger than life man walked holding hands with his mirror reflection wife. They sat to accompany all the other bigger than life herd that looked like a cattle waiting to get slaughtered by Katya. This was the bride’s side of the family.

We sat for another ten minutes. The silence soon became drowned by the chatter from the herd. They were chatty, smiley, and happy. They exuded a happiness that made Katya tap her fingers on her lap. She was doing it more violently, more repeatedly the longer we waited. I could see her biting her lip, she bit and bit it until I could see blood. Blood started dripping but not even that deterred Katya for the murder scene her eyes were conducting on the herd. If only walls could talk, they would support my account of contemplative homicide.

We all sat, and then another random person entered the chapel. He was tall, overweight, his shirt untucked from the back, his hair was wavy, covering his ears, and he spotted a lumberjack beard that contrasted his sedentary physique. He walked up to the altar and stood there, right next to the minister. The minister was neutral: not overweight, but not in shape, either. His hair was thinning, but properly groomed. He was neither bitterly silent nor flamboyantly exuberant. He was simply there to fulfill a short-term role.

“Where is Eugene's brother?” I kept thinking to myself as I looked at the tall, overweight man and that untucked shirt that looked like it was going to bring Katya’s eyes out of their sockets. Then I saw her, she was short. The shortest person there. She had long, frizzy hair, some greys were visibly sticking out. She had braces that tried correcting one of her many conventional physical imperfections. Her breasts almost greeted everyone as they were barely contained within that white dress, and she wore a red lipstick that proved unflattering given her sickly, pale complexion. And she smiled. She smiled more than anyone in that room as she made her way to the tall, overweight man with the untucked shirt. It was then that I realized, that Eugene’s brother had already arrived, and his bride-to-be had joined him.

Eugene’s brother no longer inhibited the boyish charm of Timothee Chalamet or Taylor Lautner’s toned-physique—instead, he mimicked the appearance of Ray Romano and Al Bundy--“the dad” in most early 90s-mid 2000s sitcoms. The man was exactly where he belonged—at the alter on his way to fit the conventional look of the American family unit. The smile on his face revealed that he reveled in this conventionality, something he likely was introduced to by his bride-to-be.

The twenty-minute ceremony had split chapel reactions. Eugene’s family was dead silent, the bride-to-be's family reacted conventionally; smiling, taking videos, laughing at the minister’s dry humor, and some even wept. But no one reaction stood out stronger than Katya’s. Tears came down her cheeks as her finger crunched-up her black silk skirt. It was compulsive. Katya's glare, she didn’t try concealing it because she wanted every person in that room to know that she hated what was happening and who it was happening for.

The drive back from the ceremony was silent, just like every other drive we had taken during our car ride thorough San Luis Obispo. So much was being unspoken. Eugene looked at the road intently, but I was afraid for our lives nevertheless. Eugene was having trouble driving through whatever mental fog was obstructing his view.

The reception afterward felt silent. It felt ugly. It was ugly to sit through and ugly to look at. Eugene’s side of the family all sat uniformly in silence with the occasional lean-to-the ear gossip, and the bride’s side of the family chattered and laughed and sipped their alcoholic beverages so loudly that it made my ears sting. Then there was Katya, who was seated next to Tom by the wedding cake. She sat and looked at the cake. Katya looked at that large, three-layer cake with the pink, blue, and white frosting and the bride and groom figures standing on top of it. She looked in disgust. They looked happy. Loving. Unbreakable. Everything Katya wasn't.

Eugene's brother soon came back into the room, bigger than life. He gave everyone a gruff smile as he stood next to his cake, waiting for his bride to return. The wrinkles on Katya's forehead widened as her son stood, sweat running down his own forehead, perspiring through his white button-up shirt, and making him seem like something belonging in a stable oppose to a wedding reception.

We waited for a few more minutes for the bride to return, still in her wedding dress. She was still short, but she was no longer the smallest person there. She still had long, frizzy hair, and some greys were still visibly sticking out. She still had braces that tried correcting one of her many conventional physical imperfections. Her breasts still almost greeted everyone as they were barely contained within that white dress, and she had reapplied that red lipstick that still proved unflattering given her sickly, pale complexion.

She smiled. She smiled bigger than anyone in that room ever would in their entire lives. She smiled bigger than Eugene. She smiled bigger than Katya. She smiled bigger than me.

Eugene's brother reached for the knife, it was a large, shiny kitchen knife. He handed it to his bride. She smiled as she looked at him, then at the cake. She was overcome by the smiling. She cut into the cake, slicing through it--- the pink, blue, and white frosting making contact with the knife's jagged blades. It revealed a vanilla cake, it was vanilla like that couple. The bride put down the knife, the pink, blue, and white frosting just stared. Katya stared, the sweat running down her own forehead and covering her own, firm breasts. Katya tapped her fingers on her lap. It was compulsive. Katya was doing it even more violently, repeatedly. Violently. Repeatedly. Katya kept biting her lips, reopening the fresh wound. I violently stretched my flab covered by my white dress shirt, pulling it, trying to rip it off.

The smiling. The pink, white, and blue smiling at us. The bride smiling. The smiling. The smiling. The violent tapping. The unsuccessful ripping. It was everything. The knife started moving again, this time from the table, and away from the cake.into the bride…

The pink, white, and blue were now mixed with red. Red that soon started to replace the white covering the bride. The red coming from the side of the bride, it expelled from her meaty flesh. The jagged blades with pink, white, and blue were now met with red.

There was a moment of silence, then nothing was silent ever again. Both sides of the reception spread out in chaos. No more smiling. No more laughing. No more gossiping. Crying. Yelling. Chaos. Chaos erupted just like blood erupted from the bride's meaty flesh. Eugene's brother extended his arms as his bride fell onto his chest. And his mother stood, Katya's eyes wide with both satisfaction, anger, and a red reflection as she held onto the knife with its jagged, red blades.

Someone random ran up to Katya and grabbed the knife from her, but she didn't budge. An unexplainable power came over, a power that was unrelated to her workouts. Katya pushed the person back and once again dug into the bride. Katya dug deeper and deeper through the bride's back, so deep she almost broke through to her son. Finally, Tom managed to pull her off. It didn't matter. The deed had been done.

The bride was dead.

I sat. I could hear the sirens as I sat in the bathroom. I could hear Eugene's brother weeping as he recounted what happened to the police. I could hear Tom say something inaudible. I could hearing some more mumbling, some weeping, which was likely coming from the bride's parents. Crying. Yelling. Chaos. Knocking.

"Bobby," I heard Eugene's voice. It was the first time I had heard it since the morning. I didn't respond. Instead, I stood up, wiped. Flushed. I looked. I looked in the mirror. I couldn't stop looking. Just like people couldn't stop looking at the bride as she laid, her white dress tainted red. Tainted by Lifelessness. Lifelessness. The word flooded my thoughts as I reached for it. I reached below my waist. I tucked my hand down my pants. I felt it. The flab. I pulled on it. It was compulsive. I pulled. I stretched it. I wanted to rip it off. It was flabby, staring at me. The mirror, it was reflecting the ugliest part of me.

"Bobby," I saw Eugene this time. He had managed to pick the lock to the bathroom. He stood, his mirror image staring at me. "What's wrong with you, I've been looking for you everywhere." Bobby's question replayed itself in my head a million times throughout the course of a minute. It had for months. What was wrong with me? I looked down at the bathroom sink, the scissors right next to it. Metal, sharp, they too reflected a mirror image. I reached for them. It was compulsive. I couldn't live with that image anymore. I couldn't live with Eugene. I couldn't live with the flab. I couldn't live with the images anymore. I reached up. Bobby's eyes filled with terror. That was his mirror image before I had a chance to turn around. Bobby was mistaken. Bobby's mirror image wasn't the root of my problem. I proceeded to cut.

I cut through it, the flesh turning from a pale to purple color as red started pouring out of my lower abdomen. "Bobby!" Eugene yelled out as he reached for the scissors. Just like Katya, I wasn't going to budge. I continued cutting through the flesh, the flab was almost off. Relief came over me. A life-awaited relief as the flabby curse started to rip off my body. Painless. Red painlessness. I felt tears rolling down my eyes as it was almost off. Almost. Bobby pulled the scissors as the job was nearly completed. That wasn't going to stop me. It was almost done. Almost.

I used my bear hands to pull. To rip it off. I finally could. So I did. More tears roll down my eyes as Bobby looked in terror. He no longer tried stopping me. I cried in happiness. Relief. Weightless. I had never felt so weightless. The red poured out from where the flab once was. It painted Eugene's black and white tux. It painted the bathroom floor. It painted me. It painted everything. More and more tears came down my eyes. Eugene left. He finally had the courage to leave me.

I dropped to my knees. Tears. The tears didn't stop and neither did the red. The red that dripped from inside me and from my hand, dripped from the flab. The flab. I held onto it. Its fleshiness. My fingers felt through it, squeezed it, dripping its poison. I felt it one last time before dropping it. Next to me but no longer part of me.

Tears. The tears didn't stop and neither did the red. If walls could talk, they would have been able to explain that the tears, the tears were no longer lifeless.