The Ruiner

Hunter figured that a person, after being raped, must have felt quite like he did after he had finished binging. Worthless, in pain, and full of shame. And very dirty. After a binge, he was always so very desperate to take a shower. To try to make the feelings go away. But they spread from his brain to his body, and he could never wash them off. He would scrub at his face with a wash rag until the sores on his skin had torn open and stung from the soap, but his face still felt dirty. He could wash his entire body in such a manner, but rarely would he ever feel clean. This he could not stand. He could not stand the raw, scabby, dirty texture of the flesh on his face. It made him feel like he was ruined. Like some kind of a mutant.

The binging was abnormal, and it caused other abnormalities. He was completely obsessed with popping the zits on his body. On his chin, his cheeks, his nose, his forehead. Sometimes he would get them on his back, his chest, and his arms, and he would pop these as well. There was nothing else like it in the world. He figured that a person addicted to cocaine, while injecting the needle, must have felt quite like he did when he popped a zit. The wonderful, sharp feeling as pus and blood shot from his face, often accompanied by the delicious tearing noises of his skin being ripped apart. It gave him a rush. It almost always got him aroused, or even half hard. He would stand in front of the mirror for long periods of time, squeezing at his flesh, trying to obtain the wonderful feeling as often as he could. It was nearly impossible to stop, especially when he was stressed out or frustrated. He would squeeze until his zits were red, and often bleeding. Sometimes they tore, and formed scabs. He hated his dirty face. He was ugly. A mutant.

Along with his face, he fucked up his eyebrows. He fucked up his eyelashes, too. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't stop touching them. When he found a hair that stuck out too far, he pulled it out and sometimes he ate the end of it. When he found one that felt too spiky, or one that created the horrible vibrating sensation when you stroked it, he pulled it out and ate the end of it as well. Once he had started, it was too late to stop. The skin around his eyebrows and his eyelashes would grow sore, and, much like the way that he felt when he popped his zits, he would feel the most fantastic sort of pain as the tore out the hairs from his face. It hurt, and it felt so good. Afterwards, he was left with bald eyes that felt strange when he squeezed them together. His eyebrows were left patchy and sparse. Sometimes he would damage the tender flesh underneath of his fingernails when he did this. One nail would slip underneath of the other and cut into it, causing it to bleed. Every morning before school, he would apply makeup to his ruined eyebrows, and to the lids of his naked eyes. He hated wearing it. It took forever to put on just right. Still, even with the makeup, he looked fucked up and ugly.    

He would get sad at the littlest things. He always felt stupid and disgusting. Even when people were nice to him, he felt as if he had done something wrong. He was mean to everyone. He treated his little brother the same way that drunk men do when they come home and kick their dogs. He yelled at him to get off of the computer when he didn't even want on. He screamed at him when he left his toys in the basement, and called him horrible names. Then he would slip into his room to cry. Everything made him angry. He wanted to kill his fucking mother when she told him to put away the dishes. He wanted to stab her in the stomach and watch her cry and slowly bleed to death because he had an eating disorder and nobody liked him.

By the dictionary definition, he was insane. Binge after binge after binge after binge, and he still thought that someday he was going to get thin again. He still honestly believed that some day - today - he would, just like that, stop cold turkey. He would make up the stupidest shit to keep himself from losing his head. 'Today's the ninth,' he would say to himself. 'and nine is my lucky number. I'm never going to binge again.'

He binged again on that very night.

The next day, he would think to himself, 'Yesterday didn't count, because I forgot to listen to The Last Sunrise. But now that I've listened to it, I'm never going to binge again, because The Last Sunrise is about making things end, and it will give me strength.'

But two days later, he had another binge.

He made up all sorts of crazy rituals that he knew would not work in order to try and stop it. He stood in the rain. He stood in the lake. He went to a rock concert, and shook the hand of his favourite singer. He read books about people who were anorexic and tried to be like them. He prayed to God when he knew that God was not real. Nothing worked.

He always felt disgusting. He had to wear baggy clothes to hide his fat. He couldn't wear shorts if they rose above the bottom of his knee when he sat down. He hated sitting down because his stomach would bunch together and make him look even fatter. The waistband of his jeans would cut into his waist and hurt him. All of his jeans had grown too small for him, but he did not want to get new ones in a bigger size. He was afraid, because he did not know what he would do if he grew too fat to wear his jeans at all.