A Peek at Bulimia.

Hunger. The hunger hits you like a punch. It's night, or maybe early morning. You were staring into space. Only now do you realize your candle has almost burnt itself out. How long have you been here? Too long. You could have been burning away your filthy, fattened flesh. You want to see what you look like, but you smashed your mirror long ago. Tore your sinful flesh apart with the shards of glass, smeared the blood over you so you looked as dirty as you felt. You know you're enormous - you've always known that. The sickness is getting worse though - some days you can't even get out of bed. When did you eat last? It must have been three, four days. Not long, but the hunger is clawing at your stomach like a maddened beast. Before you know what's happening, you've got three £20 notes in your shaking hand. You pull some clothes on, noting how much bigger they are on you. Still too tight for your lardass though. Tugging on shoes, forgetting your coat, you leave the house.

It's dark. The hunger is getting worse. By the time you reach the 24-hour supermarket, you're freezing and white spots are dancing in front of your eyes. As you go in and grab a trolley, people are staring at you. Are you that fat? You go to the bread section. Put in a few loaves. Then it's the sandwiches, the pizza, the peanut butter, huge bags of crisps, chocolate, everything. At the checkout you realize you're almost unconscious. You pay quickly, tear open your prize as you leave the shop. Go to a quiet bench - no time to get home. Eat, eat and eat and eat. Before you know it, your stomach, once so perfectly concave, is bulging. You eat more. The eating is blissful, desperate. A mercy ****. You try and swallow too much at once and choke. Coughing, you notice how much is already gone.

Dizzy, dragging your heavy bags with you, you rush behind the nearest building. Bend over. Throw up. You used to need fingers, but not any more. You are a master. Silent, quick, efficient. You make sure everything's up - by the time you're done it's only blood. There's a faint ringing in your ears, like someone hit you too hard. For the next hour, maybe less, maybe more, you eat. Walk. Throw up in the river. Walk. Eat. Puke in alleys. Finally run out of food, puke again. Shaking, sweating, shivering, you walk. You forget where you are, the town's drifted away; at least, the part you know has.

You break into a run; head pounding, shocks running through your injured knee, injured from the 30 miles you did. You run and run until you feel dead. When you look around, the sky's turning the faintest grey at the edges, that watered-down night colour of the earliest corners of dawn.

You are near a corner shop. You spend some of your remaining money on a bottle of wine, a bag of crisps. Throw up in the gutter. Walk and walk and walk, wishing you'd brought a jumper. Punch your stomach, hating the way it seems to bulge now. Hit it too hard and double over, puke blood and water. Lean against a wall, dizzy. Wonder whether the world's dead and you're the only one left. Walk further, don't care where. The sun's bleached the horizon, you can see it's almost dawn.

Where are you? Is this real? Screams and laughter echo in your head. You close your eyes, try to calm yourself down. See yourself, hung up in your wardrobe, body stiff as a doll, arms and legs like plastic. See yourself in the bath, deathly white but for the gashes like red tiger-stripes along your arms. The water crimson, swirling, misty. See yourself, face down, in the river. Open your eyes again, the voices are screaming, shouting, mocking, laughing. You run and run and run, pain and fear somewhere else. Eventually, you collapse, the laughter pounding in your head as the early-morning sun fades to black. Dimly you realize you're lost. Then you can't see anything, can only hear the voices, laughing at your greedy, dirty self. Darkness.