How Many Reasons?

This flash piece was first published in Chick Flicks Ezine, now sadly offline, December 2005. I had run it through my-then crit group, a fabulous workshop run by Pam Castro.

“How much weight have you put on?”  He asks me while I’m dishing up beef stroganoff ( his second helping. )  Later, I look in the mirror with a sidelong glance, my eyes too small for  the full image. I step on the scale
and see one hundred and fifty reasons  not to answer his question.

I wonder what one hundred and seventy five  reasons look like.

Reasons like razor blades slice through soft flesh  and I close my eyes until he grunts and pulls out, unhealed wounds in the  wake of scalding semen. A slap of flesh on flesh and he asks, “How much  weight have you put on?”  Bake
at 350 degrees for fifteen  minutes.

Stepping on the scales again shows me one hundred and seventy  five and I think I have two hundred reasons, maybe two hundred and twenty  five. “What’s for dinner?”  he says, ” Where is your control, if you love me,  I’ll buy you
(cold, hard) diamonds for forty pounds, pass the bread.”

The razor blades cut and slice, twice or three times a week, and I  swallow them every time.

I dream sometimes of a tiny girl, blond and  elf-like with blue eyes. She stares at me and I can smell Old Spice cologne  in a cloud over her head. Fear rises in my throat. I want to warn her, but  I can’t speak. Behind the little girl is a large dark shadow. Three hundred  pounds fall on her and I see the razors reaching out. The sounds of flesh  slapping and deep grunts awaken me.

“You’re too fat to fuck,”  he  tells me in anger. I breathe a sigh of relief that only lasts for a moment.  Pass the butter.

When you’re big, they can’t get you. But when you’re  big, they already have you.

The girl-dream recurs over and over. I  want to save her but I know she’s beyond my help. I’m afraid of the razors.  She has nowhere else to go and I’m a poor shelter.

“Why have you let  yourself go? ” he asks. My three hundred reasons answer that question.  What’s for dessert?

(c) Annetta Ribken 2005