Blood Red Dragonfly (Short Story)

 

Blood-Red Dragonfly

(A pro-ana blog)

About Me:

I am an ordinary girl.

I am becoming a princess.

Snow_White

Saturday, October 25, 2008

I am staying at grandma’s again this weekend. We have been chopping wood all morning and walking around the woods all afternoon. I guess that must have burnt tons of calories. I feel quite giddy but I won’t eat anything until tonight. Gran will be making her special apple crumble with custard. I’m not looking forwards to this. Apples disgust me, but I cannot tell her. At least, it will be easy to puke.

Last night we talked about mum. She showed me a picture. It is the first picture I have ever seen of her. We don’t keep any at home. I asked dad whether there is any but he will not answer me. He never answers any of my questions; he just stands there with that empty look for a second, then he walks away from me.  Anyway, I asked gran if I could keep the picture and she said yes, she looked doubtful too. Since mum died, nobody wants to talk about her, as if blankets of silence could keep the pain at bay. Long time ago, when I was still a child, I asked her why she died and she told me that she did when I was born. I know dad hates me for this. He secretly blames me for it. Gran said it is not my fault, though I think she is not that sure. Neither am I.

Mum had always wanted a daughter, that’s what gran says. She wanted a beautiful daughter with blood-red lips, ebony-black hair and Snow-white skin just like hers. They tried and tried for years. Mum’s womb was dry. Then they met the doctors that promised them they could help them conceive. Again, they tried and tried. The doctors made Mum’s womb rosy and moist again with their needles and tubes. Until one day, mum peed in a little test tube and the strip came pink. Pink: a daughter.  

I was born in January. Dad drove through the snowstorm like a daredevil. When they reached the ER they found mum curled in the backseat, her white muslin nightgown soaked red in a pool of blood. They said there was nothing they could do. Gran’s eyes go watery and her voice and hands tremble a lot when she talks about mum. She loved her daughter too.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I want to see ribs, shoulder blades and collarbone. Instead, I see FAT, FAT, FAT! I love coming to Grandma’s but she just makes it so difficult with all these bakes and cakes. I wish she stopped feeding me. I do not want to eat. I want to disappear.

Dad will be picking me up on Sunday with that bitch new wife of his. She hates me and I hate her too. He is like seventeen years her senior. It’s disgusting. The day she moved in I knew it would be hell for me from then on. She’s always trying to feed me. Sometimes I dream she is this horrible green-skinned witch trying to fatten me up to eat me. She is always rolling her eyes at me and making a fuss about how skinny I look. She’s jealous.  She spends hours in front of the big mirror in the hall, looking at herself, sucking her stomach in. Someone should just tell her she’s a stupid fat cow. I wish dad divorced her.

Starve on, Stay Strong!

X

Posted by: Snow_White at 5:55 PM  7 Comments

 

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Had a horrible week at home and ran away back to Gran’s after a massive argument with dad. This is the only place where I feel safe, where I can breathe in peace. I love walking through the woods, alone. I often wake up in the middle of the night and tiptoe my way out of the house for a long power-walk. I walk until I am breathless and my heart beats itself out of my ribcage. Back in the house, I lock myself in the bathroom and feel for bones in the dark.

I have never seen Dad so angry. He yelled at me until his face grew red. He had received a call from my tutor at school. I blacked out and fainted on Tuesday while running in PE. I hadn’t eaten for nearly 36 hours. They are concerned about my health and thought he should know. He already knows. Normally, he would refuse to talk about it but this time it’s different. That gossip of his wife has told him how she’s been hearing me puking after dinner. She’s also been peeping around my bedroom and discovered a stack of red apples under my bed. I hate these. She keeps packing them up for my school lunches. I relish heaping them up. Having a look at them makes me feel stronger, as if I was accomplishing perfection.

Before he married her, life with dad wasn’t perfect; at least it was our life. They’ve been talking of having a baby. The idea makes me mad. Sometimes I wish they did and that she died just like mum. Dad and I would look after this baby and he would be proud of me, he would love me. I wouldn’t be the guilty one anymore.

I hate myself for thinking like this. It’s so hard to keep dad happy. I never get it right. He said that if I’m planning to kill myself I better do that where he can’t see me. He can’t see me!

It’s only been six weeks since I was discharged from Riverdale’s. One day I blacked out and fainted. I woke up a few days later in a hospital bed with a needle on my arm and a tube forcing glucose into my bloodstream. There were white lilies in a vase near my bed and, even nearer, there was Luke.

He looked so grave, so gorgeous. I had drifted into a coma for several days, he said. Only when he came to visit I had opened my eyes. He made me promise I would enter Riverdale’s recovery program. He promised me he would wait until I felt better, so we could be together. He said to me I would be his princess, his queen and he would be my prince.

I know I cannot keep hiding this from him any longer but I’m on a high, I’m nearly there. I just want to be perfect, thin and pure as the air.

Starve on, Stay Strong!

X

Posted by Snow_White at 22:26 7 Comments