Insatiable
Christian Loche

 

Brazil was eight when she bit the head off CEO Barbie. It wasn’t something she thought about. Just a sharp, biting hunger as she sat in the middle of her cream puff pink bed with the flat white pillows arrayed around her. It was supposed to be the beach where Ken and Barbie, and even the heirloom Skipper that she wasn’t supposed to be playing with, sat together in swimwear. She was trying to wait patiently for dinner but her stomach wasn’t listening to what Mother called will power.
It was a quick snap and her teeth took off Barbie’s head mid-neck. She chewed half-heartedly expecting resistance, but it crunched with the same buttery goodness as Ritz crackers. She swallowed it down, plastic hair trailing down her throat like spaghetti noodles or the curly strands of Cheez-Whiz that she was never allowed to have – except when she snuck it out of the open container at the grocery store. Eating Barbie was less traumatic than she’d anticipated. She hadn’t noticed Barbie’s tiny wire-rim glasses when she swallowed although it was apparent that she’d eaten them too. With the swaying nonchalance of a preying mantis she lifted Barbie back up to her mouth and took off each arm at the elbow.
Then she paused, crunching on tiny wrist joints and surveyed her room. Mother and Father were downstairs, Mother making steamed vegetables and chicken for dinner and Father doing whatever he did while she played alone. But she could imagine their disgust. If she couldn’t eat a cookie, then eating Barbie, who was definitely not clean or healthy, would upset them. Mother would say her name with the ill intent that Brazil was not allowed to use. Heavy emphasis on the Bra with the sharp stattaco zil rising up in octave and volume. She wasn’t allowed to say Mother like that although she often snuck in just enough whine to mimic the emphasis.
“You need a bath,” she chided Barbie. “If you’d gone in the water like you said you were going to then you’d be clean and I wouldn’t get in trouble for eating you.”
Ken turned his head, still attached, towards his wife and nodded up and down in a movement that required his entire body to commit to the motion. “We should have gone in the water. What if she wants to eat the rest of us?”
Barbie didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She had no head.
“Then you’ll have to go to the ocean.” Brazil informed all of them solemnly. “You can’t just sit in the sun all day. That’s a waste of time.”
She placed the three of them in Barbie’s Camaro and drove them into the bathroom where each individual, including Barbie, were dipped ceremoniously into the sink water until they looked clean. There was a moment when she wasn’t sure if she should take off their swimsuits, as though there was something slightly naughty about eating them without any clothes on. Especially Ken who looked unnatural in his skin-colored flatness. Skipper made sense. Skipper looked like her. So Brazil set Skipper to one side and finished off Barbie while still wearing her Malibu pink bikini with matching heels. One of the heels went down wrong and tickled her throat at the exact moment that Mother walked into the bathroom.
“Brazil,” said her Mother. “What are you doing?”
“They went swimming.” Brazil held up the two dolls that still dripped water down her hands. All evidence of Barbie was gone and she was glad of it, glad except that the hunger was still there, even though she’d eaten all of her. She decided it was like carrots. She was allowed to eat as many as she wanted but they never filled her up, not at all, not even a little bit.
“Well, dry them off, put them away, and come down to dinner.” Mother didn’t notice anything. “And tell your Father that you were doing homework. He thinks you spend too much time playing.”
“My homework is done.” Brazil answered. “You just have to check it.”
Her Mother’s face twisted and Brazil was pained to see that look. She loved her Mother so much except when she gave that look. Her teacher did it too and she thought she’d found the word to describe it – exasperation – except she didn’t understand what was so exasperating to adults. Those were the facts. Her homework was done.
“Can I watch TV?” If playing was out, she might as well try.
“Dinner’s ready. We’re having chicken and broccoli casserole.”
Brazil couldn’t hide it. She didn’t want chicken and broccoli casserole. It was almost as bad as carrots, leaving a gaping hole in her belly that the glass of water she was allowed before bed – never filled.
Mother’s face was like the Xerox machine at school, just spitting out the same image, one after another. Brazil shrugged and headed back to her room. As she was putting away Ken and Skipper, she reached down and snapped Skipper’s head off. Skipper had blunt and open features, not like the finely carved face that Barbie had. But they were both effortlessly skinny. At the beach they’d eaten hot dogs and cotton candy, and Brazil was positive that Barbie didn’t make steamed brussel sprouts for Ken.
This time her teeth barely noticed the hard plastic texture, just mulched it while she debated what Skipper tasted like, a savory taste, the way that barbeque colored the meat dark and smoky. Then she laid the body into the case next to Ken and the four other dolls that hadn’t wanted to go to the beach.
“It’s dinner time.” She told them archly. “I’ll be back to get you dressed for this evening.”
                                                     ****

But it didn’t end with Barbie and Skipper. Brazil ate her way through every doll in the case and finished off their accessories on one rainy afternoon when no one was looking. She popped high heels into her mouth like jelly beans and washed them down with a diet 7UP. It occurred to her that things were getting out of control when she ate the Camaro and then chewed her way through the doll’s gilded case. But the sequins tasted like the Jolly Ranchers, every flavor, including the biting cinnamon ones that always stuck to her molars.
Her room started to look different, neater, nothing that Mother or Father noticed overtly. And Brazil was quick to point out that she was trying to play with more grown-up things and putting her dolls away. They bought the explanation, so pleased with the acceptance she was showing at the dinner table. For the first time in two months she didn’t spend every meal whining about the healthy options that were provided.
Brazil moved into her closet for other edibles
There was an entire stack of dress shoe boxes, each pair only worn once. They were boxed by holiday with last Easter on top. Inside were the glossy black patent pumps with twin bows that matched the equally unworn dress. Brazil was delighted to find out they tasted like black licorice. Every new thing she ate tasted like something she loved, and then, there was no stopping her.
She got caught eating a pencil at school because they tasted like the extra-salty pretzels and Mrs. Hunter was disappointed but classified her with Benny and Jason who ate paper and glue respectively. Brazil didn’t tell Mrs. Hunter that it was her third box and that the supply closet was almost out. She had a favorite brand at that point but didn’t ask for them, the eating was still a furtive act, something she did when no one was looking.
When she couldn’t eat there was a sense of restlessness that overwhelmed her. Her attention span dropped and she had a hard time focusing. Even homework was frequently delayed as she couldn’t stop chewing on the pencil long enough to finish. Mother thought she’d put on weight and restricted her food again: to white rice, fish and always the endless vegetables.
Then the school nurse realized that she had grown five inches in two months and put on twenty-six pounds. Mother bought her new clothes but with a disapproving look in her eye, she thought Brazil was sneaking candy bars, and notes were sent to all of her teachers that she was not allowed any junk food, not even a cupcake on April’s birthday.
Mother and Father were not as calm as the school nurse who said things like ‘growth spurt’ and ‘normal’. They took her to a doctor who ran tests. Blood work, a full physical, and x-rays where he saw the outline of five dominoes that were still digesting. He thought she’d carried the toys into the x-ray room. He declared Brazil healthy and told her parents to keep an eye on her. There were hushed comments about what she was being fed at home and a nurse, in sympathy, snuck her a butterscotch. It had the same flavor as buttons.
When they returned home she sat on the steps and hung against the banister to listen to them talk. Father had taken the day off work to go with them and was irritated. He thought Mother was too upset, but mainly because Brazil’s diet meant that he had to follow along as well. A restriction he dealt with by eating lavish lunches at the office where neither her wife nor daughter could see.
“I grew five inches the summer of my junior year,” he said.
“She’s only eight.” Mother snapped back. “And neither of us is tall. The doctor said that if she grows again she could be six feet tall.”
There was a sense to Brazil that six feet would be too tall.
“He wouldn’t say it, but I looked up glandular disorders. If that’s what she has, she could be…”
Brazil leaned forward. What could she be?
“That won’t happen,” Father cut her off. “Stop getting so upset over a perfectly normal thing. She’s a child. They grow. My cousin Bill was a tub of lard as a kid and a running back in college. Sometimes these things even out in the long run.”
“Maybe we should enroll her in something, swimming or gymnastics. The doctor said she might need more activity to control her weight. Maybe a sport would be beneficial.”
Their voices grew muted, as they always did when they fought. Brazil wanted so badly to leap in between them and tell them the truth. That she was hungry. It didn’t feel wrong the way being tall seemed to be wrong. She wasn’t fat like Mason Hutchinson and except for the little baby roll when her too short pants pinched tight at her waist she looked just like everyone else.
Maybe eating right was just a part of growing up. The same way that Father thought she played too much with her dolls, a little girl’s obsession. Well, she was doing exactly what they wanted, she was growing up, all of her dolls were gone. But even as she realized it she noticed that her pretty bangle bracelet was down to the last charm and her lips sucked the tiny red terrier into her mouth.

****
Brazil kept eating.
And she kept growing. The tests continued. The state was called. And then they caught her.
It was irresistible, the hunger, just like it had been the first day. Brazil was left alone in an office while her Mother, Father, and two specialists spoke in frantic tones outside. Brazil wandered around the desk and the book-filled walls where she saw the edge of a telephone in the trash. There was another one on the desk, an official looking black model, identical to the one in the trash except that there was a big crack in the base. She was sure no one would notice, so Brazil lifted it out of the can. It only took a second to eat the hand piece which tasted like toasted walnuts and she had just snapped off the bottom, crunching through the symbols (*) and (Oper O) and (#) when the door opened and her parents came in.
Mother screamed. Father cursed. The two specialists ran over and wrested the phone away from Brazil and then everyone shrieked at each other, except for Brazil who sat there and felt the hunger gnawing away at the inside of her. They took her away, put her in an empty room and ran more tests. More specialists came to talk to her, take pictures of her, and then when they didn’t get their answers they brought her to a room of specially chosen objects. They weren’t the kinds of things that Brazil liked to eat; plastic, metal especially when it was silver plated or anodized, and painted wood that reminded her of M&Ms with its candy coating. They gave her simple things, an apple, a candy bar, a small rubber ball, and a pencil. Two snaps and she demolished the pencil. Mother and Father cried in the other room while the specialists watched her finish off the rest, except for the candy that she left untouched. The specialists rubbed their hands against their heads and tried to apply broken rules to a new situation.
****

The hospital asked them to leave when the paparazzi presence grew too large. They couldn’t take her home, Brazil was almost five feet ten inches tall and still eating, she’d taken to working her way through the stuffing of couches because they tasted like cotton candy. If they put her in bare rooms she ate her clothes. If they sedated her, she waited until she woke back up and then looked for things to eat. She couldn’t deny it and Mother couldn’t prepare the carefully calculated dinners anymore without crying all over them.
Mother and Father quit speaking to each other and then to Brazil. She would sit in silence and wish that she had dolls to play with except that she knew the truth. She’d eat them. One after another just like Barbie on the first night. The memories made her drool and the hunger took her harder than it had ever done. They put her in a new hospital, one where every patient wore blue and the nurses white. Brazil grew so frustrated that she poked a hole in her wall and ate through the sheetrock and into the next room before they discovered her.
She ate and she grew. The hospital released her. Mother and Father came in the car but Brazil didn’t get in. She just walked away and they didn’t stop her.

****

Afterwards, the news helicopters sometimes followed her as she walked outside, ponderous at eight and half feet tall. Her parents went bankrupt with lawsuits because she couldn’t stop or shut off the hunger. She ate fences, buildings, walls, telephone poles, the grass in great shoveling scoops of her hands. She ate and ate and ate. The government threatened to cordon her off, ship her to an island, there was talk of humanely euthanizing her before she caused anymore destruction – all things that Brazil wept about in the night when she curled up against a tree to sleep and awoke to find that she’d sucked all of the leaves off the branches, which tasted like Andes mints going down. The landscape looked like it had been bottom trawled when she passed.
Most people stayed away from her, not frightened but disgusted.
So it had been a long time when the little girl crossed Brazil’s path. The girl was tiny compared to the eight feet and seven inches that Brazil stood, naked because clothes never lasted long enough to fit properly. She no longer had Skipper’s tiny body all flat and hairless, there was a solidity to her that didn’t seem human and dirt filled in all the naughty bits so it was hard to see the little girl in the giant. But this girl, she was only a year or two younger than Brazil with a red wagon that was filled with all of her dolls; three Barbies including one that Brazil had once owned, a Raggedy Ann without Andy, and a generic baby doll that worn a christening gown.
“Hi,” the girl chirped up at Brazil. “I’m Danica.”
“Hi,” she answered. “I’m Brazil.”
“I’ve seen you on the news. How come you grew so big?” Danica parked her wagon carefully as though the wagon would roll away and injure the dolls inside.
Brazil shrugged and squatted down so she could see better. “I don’t know. I just got hungry and started eating things. I used to have a Barbie like yours.”
“Yeah, that’s my favorite cause she’s so pretty.” Danica pointed to the immaculately coiffed doll in the wagon. “My Mommy is that pretty too and Daddy says that I’ll look just like her when I grow up.” More confidentially she added. “I’m supposed to be doing piano right now but they were bored so we came outside.” And then in a whisper. “It’ll take my Mom awhile to figure out I’m not practicing. I left my recital tape on.”
“Why?” Brazil asked.
Danica shrugged. “I dunno. That’s just what we felt like doing today. Don’t you feel like doing stuff sometimes?”
Brazil nodded.
The little girl thought about things for a minute and reached into her jumper pocket. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? I’ve got some Skittles.”
 Brazil was hungry. So she reached down and bit the girl’s head off. She was surprised to realize that, like Barbie, it went down just fine.





















 

 

Copyright © 2010 Christian Loche
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"