TW Eating Disorder

Miri did not understand why her room was always cold. Did all the many doctors and nurses want her to shiver beneath taut skin and thin blankets? They want you to die, dear, Set mused boredly. Miri frowned. “Die? But it is their job to keep me alive. What would they tell Mom and Dad if I died?” Set merely laughed and shoved Thoth to the front of her head where he, too, looked bored. If you die, they can call you a failure. They can blame it on your hunger strike, on your ‘insanity,’ on anything. They can focus more on their healthy patients. And… The god paused and Miri held her breath so long her lungs started to ache. And they can stop fearing you.


A shiver of power ran down Miri’s emaciated spine. Power? Her? She glanced at the little mirror on the opposite wall, covered in protective clear plastic. She spent a lot of time looking into the cold metal, staring into her own eyes and searching for answers. If she got close enough, could she see the gods at a table behind her skin? If she became thin enough, would she see their power and knowledge running through her veins? The doctors had laughed when Papa first had her committed. An eighteen-year-old girl who hears the Ancient Egyptian gods in her head? Preposterous. But Miri knew they were scared, too. Scared that she wasn’t crazy at all, scared that they would anger the true powers in the universe if they so much as ran a finger over her paper-thin wrist, looking for a pulse.


But they locked her away anyway, in a little white room with a bed that had been bolted to the floor and a thin mattress that would fail to smother even a small bird. She heard them whispering in the hall outside her bed—Miri was very good at hearing even the tiniest of noises—false concern lacing their voices, whispering that she was going to die. Sometimes that made Miri afraid, too. She did not want to die. The gods would be angry with her, and she would be sent far from them in death if she failed them. But it seemed too painful to swallow the disgusting soups and vitamins they sent her, each attempted bite scraping against her throat. They had threatened her with an IV, then, and it had taken all of Miri’s strength to fight them off for another few days. “Not before Halloween,” she had pleaded, curled in a ball beneath her bed, and the look in her eyes must have been enough to replace their fear with pity, at least for now.


Raziya would come on Halloween, she knew it. It was their holiday. Raziya wrote her letters sometimes, which Miri kept in a neat stack in the corner, and each page was yellowed and smudged from Miri’s shaking fingers touching each sentence over and over and over and over. She would visit for Halloween and bring some color into this sad place. Maybe she would have thought of a way to get her out of here. Miri was sure. She just had to hold on until Halloween.


Raziya hadn’t written in weeks.


Raziya, Raziya, Raziya. The gods scoffed and taunted her and the powerful feeling faded as quickly as it had come. Raziya is not your savior, foolish girl. We are all that matters, all that has ever mattered, all that will ever matter. How dare you cling to the falseness of another puny human?


Miri was crying. They were gods, why couldn’t they snap the bars on her window or tear down the whole of Manhattan Psychiatric Center? Hell, why couldn’t they tear down the whole damn city, if she was so important? You do not want the answer to that question, little one, said Anubis, leaving Miri shuddering through her tears. A nurse entered without knocking, looking alarmed at the state of her patient. “Miri, it’s time for board games in the community room.” She was maybe thirty and had a stupid hat that looked like a paper boat. “You will join us, won’t you?” she implored, but Miri could scarcely see through her tear-blurred eyes. “It’s Halloween themed, dear, I know how much you like—"


“W-why would I stoop to your level when I have the creators of the universe in my head?” Miri suddenly realized how stupid she must sound. There was a war inside her head. The gods scolded her when she spoke of humans. Humans scolded her when she spoke of gods. There was no way to win. The tears wracked her body harder. The room was so cold. The nurse was gone, but the door was left open so that everyone could hear her fall apart. And then the gods spoke. I will answer it, since Anubis would spare you. Set’s voice was crueler than Miri had ever heard it. Each word sent shards of ice through her heart.


You are not important. You were never important. You think it is only your puny little mind we inhabit? His mocking laugh was more painful than anything he could say. You do not matter, Miri. Her name was Miri. Miri, Miri. You are insignificant, and we have grown tired of your weakness. You do not deserve our words, and you will never even begin to accomplish the tasks we have laid out for you.


Miri found that she was rocking back and forth, arms wrapped so tightly around her knees that they might break. She was still crying, the tears lodging themselves in her throat, on her legs, on the stupid purple sweater they had given her to wear. And suddenly she realized she could hear her own cries, echoing off the bare walls. Her body stilled. It was silent, save for the laughter of the other patients coming from down the hall. Miri stood and walked to the mirror, arms pulled tight around her stomach now, fingers buried in the purple wool.


The girl looking back at her was not godly, not special, not chosen for anything. She was painfully thin, with bones so brittle they might break. Hair long and matted, posture sad. And her eyes. Miri shuddered and the tears threatened to well up again. The eyes were supposed to be the window to the soul. The window to the gods who had saved her. If her soul was once there, it had long since withered and died. Her eyes were empty and dead and Miri knew she would soon be, too. “Help.” Her voice broke.


She was running down the hall, bare feet crashing on the cold linoleum, staring at the wide-eyed group of patients, cards in their hands and passive smiles on their faces. And Miri realized something else. This room wasn’t cold. They had tried to drive her from her room, to force her to see the complacent way everyone else was living. To shame her into being healthy.


It was hard to breathe.


She was running down the hallways with no clue where to go, where to turn. There was no one and yet, and yet, “I wish,” her voice broke with the effort, “for someone to come and take me away from this place.”