The Blooming of the Better Girls

Content warning: descriptions of mental health/self-image and physical violence

They would be back. The girls with the long stalk necks, palms poised and hard pressed against the bloody payphone. The same red, plastic grille you spilled your guts into until you wheezed, your stomach curling inward and upon itself, growing cold as the sun plunged below the Ashe junipers shading the Texas rail line. You can’t go back to that platform any longer because you know that they will be there. They skulk about at night, emerging from the train tracks at the first sight of trouble. Alas, you cannot call home and question where everyone has been while you were knee deep in torment, nor solicit their consolatory affirmations of “They’ll leave you be eventually” because you know for certain that they won’t. Because the blood they suckled from your already barren body—evidence of your affliction—will have muffled the phone’s mouthpiece, and no one will be able to hear you over the unremitting static.

Momma used to warn you those girls were bad news. That they wouldn’t stop ‘til you retorted, that they’d reap what they sowed, but rest assured they’d someday meet their maker, though it had been made evident to you why their “maker” had been so reluctant to face them. They’d don garish garments: cocktail dresses, vicũna wool coats, every accessory you've ever coveted, then turn their backs to sway so you’d esteem their gorgeous figures. They’d return with baseball bats and bribes and bruise your knees while outmoded soundtracks steadied by the hum of their sickly sweet jeering saturated the air.

You had begged them to stop time, and time again.

In their aftermath, you would run—no sprint for refuge. Legs pumping, heart pounding, whipping your head rearward as you passed the frontiers, summiting every borderline of your bitter tomorrows at the prospect of shelter. There would be plenty of alcoves and pillars and picket fences you could cower behind along the road to nowhere, but there is no sure means to keep those girls at bay forever. They would strike you without warning. At the quietest hour, they would poke and prod you, leave you drowning in a bloodbath of your own making.

Today feels peculiar. The sky flaunts its typical downcast expanse at the height of hurricane season, but the thick, humid air has been supplanted by a mild breeze. You watch for thistles as your pace eases, mind calmed by the sight of sprawling English ivy and plump cantaloupes peeking from the front yard. The porch lights of the house you're now forced to call home appear less frightening. Lurid. Kinder. Even so, the moment you dust your shoes off and step through those doors, the pretense of safety you promised yourself dissipates. You look down. The flabs of skin they stretched, your patellae that ripened into two portly plums, every contusion they detonated in their wake is sure to vanish in the eyes of those who dwell in your domicile, those who never once saw you like Momma did. Each day you rouse braced for battle, and the only words those vapid folk utter to you pertain to how you'd like your eggs this morning and their measure of achievement and how you have yet to gratify that threshold. Every message they convey contains disdain for your proposed future or the quality of your physical state, not knowing what distresses plague your mind the moment you shut your eyes. How could they? To your knowledge, you are alone. The only one well-acquainted with the swan-necked girls. So when you arrive, you dart straight to the bathroom, drawn to the fluorescent light like a moth to a flame. You gyrate the shower faucet to the hottest setting before stepping before the mirror. The glass is decked with lightbulbs that do little for your complexion, returning the image of a haggard corpse, pouches of flaccid skin suspended below starless eyes. Your hands begin to spasm as you bring your right arm to your cheeks, fingers frenetically picking at your every blemish (and there are many) while your eyes betray you, drifting toward your colossal thighs, which are then subject to your mind's adjudication. You are appalled by your wreckage. Repulsed by your ruination.

When you can no longer bear the sight of yourself, you'll slip into the comfort of a scalding shower. Water seeps down in caustic rivulets. You rake your brittle nails across swathes of scalp, through skin dotted with horripilation. Eyes shut, stagnant locomoting, body in autopilot as you exuviate layer, after layer—anything to purge the sensation of invasion gripping your conscience. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. When the cold moisture begins to dwindle, its diminished sigh exhausts, a screech pervades the last trickling drops, and you know you have been at peace for far too long. Suddenly, a silhouette blurs as it maneuvers through the frosted glass. Mahogany, fading at its seams. It comes closer and you scream, but no words come out. The figure has rendered you incapacitated. From the crevice beneath the divider springs a hand pawing at you ravenously. You scream once more, but to no avail, body clinging to the base's furthest extremity you can manage. Your hands slip from the tiles, and with them, your hope. You examine the hand creeping toward you: skin taut, round lunula, nail beds perfection. They are here. They're really here. A large thud erupts from the outside. You hear the door vibrating against the frame. Something substantial is out there, bludgeoning its way in. You want to shriek and howl and cry because no one else is there to shield you from them, to coddle you and to hold you like the unknowing child your conscience abandoned so long ago.

Despite yourself, you gather the courage to exit the shower, to confront them head-on. They barge in, a procession of long stalk-necked girls encircling you, clothed with scintillating smiles and t-shirts that advertise their appellations you know so well. Doubt. Contingent Worth. Idealization. Self-surveillance. Body dysmorphia. Each girl simultaneously more and less golden than the next. You hear of them often, bounding about in mundane conversations, but to see their manifestations up close and personal is a whole new freakish ordeal. They parade around you, and with each revolution, their movements grow faster and more erratic until the blocky Sharpie defining each of their implements becomes hardly coherent. Just as you suspect they are spinning out of control, your vision marred and disjointed, a voice from the outside—something seemingly omniscient—cuts through the chaos.

"Are you alright?" she asks, her tone rife with concern, "You've been locked in the shower for forty minutes."

The swan girls stop. They exchange looks of pure terror. All at once, their grins begin to expand into ovals and their necks elongate all the more. You watch in perverse satisfaction as their painfully perfect visages stretch into misshapen silicone masks. Bloated proportions, lips overdrawn, curves undulating until they contract into a ball that evaporates into nothingness right below your feet. You remain in your strained position for a few eternities until a sigh rushes through your throat.

You feel glad, finally, at last, relieved of their exaction.

You dry your hair off and sweep a towel over your shoulders. Adorn yourself with the loosest, least form-fitting shirt and shorts you can find. You traipse through the corridors with your lids half-closed, chest puffed, and chin tilted ten degrees upward. When you are seated at the dinner table in a room full of strangers you've met time, and time again, you beam. A woman—the same woman who had saved you earlier, your savior, your paladin—sets a cup of water on the appliqué placemat dedicated just for you. You admire the transparency of the glass, the authenticity it brings. It is honest. But at a closer glance, entranced by your reflection, that clear confession, your left cheek warps. It nearly separates from your face, and you are once again, reminded of that bathroom mirror.

You can't run back to that bloody payphone because who would you tell? They would be back. They would, most certainly, be back.