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Cindy doesn’t eat much anymore.
Mealtimes at her house are spent sitting in silence at an empty table, nibbling cautiously at whatever she can find in the fridge and hoping it hasn’t gone out of date. She avoids anything full of sugar or fat, stomach turning at the thought of putting so many calories inside of herself. Cindy’s watched the movies, Cindy’s listened to her mom. She knows the rules. If she wants to be pretty, there are sacrifices she has to make.
Breakfast has become a faraway notion; distant and nostalgic, like remembering an old friend. To reminisce on it brings a sense of rancid guilt to the ocean that is her gut, and Cindy does her best not to stir the choppy waves any further. Her mouth tastes of mint and bile, her stomach is not yet awake enough to growl, and with enough time between meals, it’s easy to forget hunger exists at all.
For a certain amount of time, anyway. The crawling, wrenching, squeezing sensation of her insides demanding food soon becomes Cindy’s closest friend, and she takes a vindictive sort of triumph in denying it. Her hair is tamed into two perfect ponytails, her outfits are pink and pretty, and Cindy is the master of her own body. All of her body, in every way she can be.
There are no more dinners spent trapped between two shouting adults, swallowing around mulch as glass shatters beside her. No more stench of alcohol in the air infesting her food, putrid and potent and repulsive. All that remains are the cans of beer in the garage; the tightly corked wine bottles her mom pulls out when she cries. Cindy doesn’t have to thank her parents for a half-baked pizza or lukewarm bowl of soup. She’s mature, she’s independent. She manages her own meals now.
During lunch, Cindy sits at the cool kids table. Jerome deems her worthy company, Buggs eyes their classmates suspiciously every time they so much as glance in Cindy’s direction, and she has one side of a long metal table all to herself. It’s easy to scoff at the halfhearted lunches her mom packs her, easy to pretend she was given anything in the first place when Cindy rejects homemade snacks on principle.
Lily sits some space away, always with a carefully packaged, full lunch. The sandwiches are identical and impersonal, but they’re hers , and unlike Cindy’s, the bread isn’t lopsided and unbuttered and careless. Lily snacks on chocolates and candy, all the delights Cindy’s been deprived of and has elected to rid her diet of in turn.
Her blood boils when she sees Lily smile at lunch, so carelessly indulging in everything Cindy refuses to let herself. Cindy knows the rules. Cindy knows how to be pretty. She figures it’s only fair that she teach Lily too.
When Cindy addresses her, her words are razor-sharp and dripping with judgement, the arch of her eyebrows easily condemning Lily’s lunch choices. Hideous hatred twists monstrously in her empty gut, and Cindy channels her envious resentment into something that will hurt. She lords her diet over Lily, proclaims that in Billy’s absence, it looks like his sister’s been eating his share on top of her own.
Smug and surprised and vaguely suspicious, Cindy notices when Lily stops snacking. She sees the donuts offered up to Applegate every time Lily gets in trouble, the sweets she rolls morosely between her finger and thumb, the packets of chips she deposits carefully in the trash. Every move Lily makes is cautious, precise. Lily’s smart . Cindy may not like her, but she can admit that much. And if Lily’s following after her, that means Cindy’s doing something right.
It isn’t long before Lily comes up with the idea of selling her food during lunch. Bitterly emulous, Cindy wishes she’d come up with it first. At first, Monty’s intrigued, offering a fair sum in exchange for everything Lily’s willing to give. But she offers too much too soon, and while Lily’s smart, Monty’s much smarter. He takes advantage of the opportunity she gives, and after she starts dealing with him every single day, he’s savvy enough to lower his prices to essentially nothing. Lily still takes them, of course, because it’s not like she has anywhere else to go. But nobody wants to buy her untouched sandwiches or feeble yoghurt pots, and Cindy gets the feeling Monty only keeps up business with her because he pities her.
Lily uses the money to spy on the principal. She’s making plenty of deals, Cindy notices wryly, offering favours for favours to further her useless investigation. Lily knows as well as the rest of them do that when someone disappears, they’re gone for good– especially if the principal is involved. Cindy reckons Jerome would be willing to engage with Lily’s bargains, had she not been so vehemently and blatantly hostile towards his father.
Preoccupied as she is with keeping up her image and enjoying acceptable company, Cindy doesn’t often sneak out of the lunch hall. When she does, it’s with a smuggled packet of cigarettes in her pocket, ones she’s pilfered from the counters she can barely reach back home. Her kindergarten’s hall monitor is all too eager to accept, and to give her space to breathe where no-one else will, where she never seems to be able to let herself. The smell of smoke winds itself like a vine around her lungs, infesting every nook and crevice, clinging to her clothes. She learns to stop coughing at the vile scent of it, and at the very least, the nausea it brings her quickly kills any desire to eat that yet remains.
Cindy declares herself a vegan to spare herself some hassle. She doesn’t know what it means , not exactly, but her classmates don’t either, and it keeps them from asking questions about her diet. It sounds professional ; it provides Cindy exactly the sense of victorious superiority she’s looking for in something simple as the selectiveness of her food. She knows how to take care of herself, how to present exactly the image she wants. Cindy is popular, and pretty, and vegan.
Ms Applegate derides her for it. The lunch lady shakes her head in shallow reproach. The janitor’s face scrunches up in what might have been a laugh, had he been capable of a smile that looked anything but grotesque.
Cindy ignores them all. She knows what she’s doing, and she needs not listen to the washed-up failures who wound up spending their lives attending to her. She takes pleasure in pestering Applegate, in criticising the lunch lady, in rolling her eyes at the bloodthirsty janitor. They had their chance to do something important, and they wasted it. Applegate is flabby, the lunch lady is giant, and the janitor’s spine contorts to accustom for his glass hip.
Cindy knows the janitor well. They form an odd sort of kinship; a mutual understanding. Being cruel gives her a savage thrill, and impaling her classmates makes the janitor’s eyes twinkle like nothing else. He’s happy to take care of the liquor that remains in Cindy’s house, and she’s happy to see it go. She holds one over him, he lowers his mop in return. Neither of them like each other, not really. But the janitor is one of the few people Cindy dares to hope doesn’t hate her.
After her boyfriend shows her that recipe, any sense of decorum is thrown out of the window.
The knowledge of what he’s done hits her like a slap in the face, burning and violent and striking her with grotesque, horrifying clarity. Cindy’s mouth floods with the metallic tang of blood, her stomach convulsing in revulsion as she fights the urge to retch. Fury and despondency and loathing and injustice stab like a thousand knives into her chest, coating her hands and her lips with bright, unwashable vermillion.
The remnants of the Biscut Ball expire instantly in her throat, quickly growing fuzzy mould spores and releasing a thousand fluttering fluffy particles. Cindy remembers running her hands through Biscuit’s fur, burying her face in it to drown out the sound of her parents’ screaming matches, giggling wetly when her only friend licked the salty tears from her cheeks.
She feels her lips moving, inconsequential noises falling like clockwork from her robot mouth. Familiar insults, familiar threats. This time, she means them.
Cindy’s eyes burn just as the rest of her does, her skin crawling so viscerally that Cindy wishes she could tear it all off. Her gut churns incessantly and agonisingly, wave after wave of nausea colliding with her with all the force of a freight truck at full speed. She bites the inside of her cheek until more of that coppery crimson coats her tongue, and swallowing takes monumental effort as she tries to remember how to breathe.
The revulsion does not fade as she forces quivering air into her stony lungs, only strengthened by the white-hot rage igniting within her like a forest fire, red lightning striking her heart and catching every limb alight with fury. She shakes not with fear, but sheer, potent, unvanquishable wrath .
Cindy bares the teeth that tore at what she loved most, digs her nails into her palms until the sting can strengthen her inferno, and lets loose a scream that’s more beast than human as she lunges towards the janitor. So long perfecting her image of decorum, of superiority, of pretty pink perfection wrapped up in a neat, feminine bow.
Her entire body throbs with the need to make him pay , to inflict on him even a fraction of the anguish he’s thrust upon her for fun . He grins when she approaches him, all crooked yellow teeth and leering charcoal eyes. He fed her her dog. He doesn’t deserve to live.
She’s too full. The Biscut Balls she’s eaten navigate their way throughout her, invasive and revolting, and punch at the wall of her stomach as though attempting to break their way out by force. She wants to vomit. She wants to cry. She wants to curl up for a thousand years and never speak to anyone again.
Cindy burns. The realisation of what she’s done, of what he’s done, is not gentle, not kind, not softened by shock. It’s sharp like a slap to the face, overwhelming like thunder in her ears, disgusting like the smoke-stained jackets her father left behind. It’s hot as Venus, wrathful as Saturn, driven as Mars. It hungers.
Cindy can hardly breathe as she spots him, let alone move her lips into coherency, but when he looks at her with that smug, sick, triumphant glint in his eyes, the truth comes to her as though whispered in her ears by the gods. There is no need for pleasantries, not now. Cindy is no longer femininity, no longer grace, no longer cute pink dresses and delicate green leaves.
Cindy is justice, Cindy is vengeance, Cindy is punishment. Cindy is going to make him feel just as wretched as he’s made her, is going to tear at his skin like he tore at Biscuit’s, is going to feast just as he’d arranged her to until he begs her for mercy. Cindy is furious and grieving and hurt so deeply that the wound sears into her skin, branding every cell with the weight of what she’s done, of what he’s made her do.
Cindy feels nothing but victory when his surprise becomes alarm, nothing but satisfaction when that gravelly chuckle becomes a scream.
Cindy smiles viciously when blood coats her teeth, dripping from jagged points she’d failed to file down.
Cindy glowers when he raises a hand to the hole where his ear used to be, not even trying to deny he’s the reason her dog is dead.
Cindy moves quickly and relentlessly, savage and grieving, merciless and thirsty for blood. Carefully whitened teeth are stained with scarlet, crunching through sinew and bone with a strength Cindy had never dreamed of possessing before. Hoarse and choking, his screams begin to peter out, his larynx sundered and his lying, traitorous, horrid voice silenced. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
The hunger inside of her thirsts for more. She swallows chunks of muscle and flesh like a man starved, power thrumming alongside the poison in her veins. It’s disgusting. It’s unladylike. It’s filling. It’s revenge.
Craving and cacophonous, the chasm within her clamours for more– but Cindy has learnt restraint, and been practicing it for months. She can feel her classmates’ eyes upon her, shining with shock and wet with weakness. Good , she thinks savagely, still vibrating with rage. She relishes Jerome’s raised eyebrows, the palm Lily’s raised to her mouth, Nugget’s vague interest, how Monty’s face matches the sickly green of his jacket. A part of her wishes Buggs was still around, so she could watch his mouth drop open in something close to awe.
Her peers are violent, self-interested creatures, desensitised to blood and eager to dispose of those who pose a threat. And yet, Cindy doubts any of them would sever a man’s head from his neck with their teeth.
The thought thrills and sickens her all at once. She feels animalistic. She feels formidable. Her dog is still dead. Biscuit’s remnants sit in her stomach alongside the janitor’s.
But Cindy has learnt restraint, and been practicing it for months. Slimy tissue shifts under her sharp nails as she holds that head like a trophy, carrying it with her when she strides purposefully back towards her boyfriend. The fire in her eyes has not died, not quite; after reaching such intensity that it felt like ice, the inferno glancing across her pupils cooled into something controlled.
The new kid looks at her with something between disturbance and fascination, and if Cindy tries hard enough, she can almost delude herself into believing it’s devotion. Either way, he has proved himself– and despite all she has shown him, he does not flinch away when he approaches. There’s a detached clinicality to the way his expression smooths, no twitch of a jaw or furrow of a brow to give him away. His serenity grounds some of the ungovernable rage thrumming through her veins, and Cindy finds herself calming enough to appear composed.
Dainty, pretty, independent, self-controlled: she has an image to uphold. When Cindy speaks, it’s a lot more cautiously than she’s used to. “...I wasn’t expecting to find out what happened to my dog today.”
She takes a moment then to quell the tightening of her lungs. Grief rises, familiar and thick, in her throat. Biscuit was CIndy’s best friend, Cindy’s truest friend. Biscuit loved her. And now she’s dead.
Squeezing the skull in her hands reminds Cindy of her retribution, and a wave of vindicated, painful calm washes over her.
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” her voice softens, because this much is not a lie. Violence is never Cindy’s first call of action: she relies on insults and manipulation, planned barbs and orchestrated spats. Her knife is as adorable and deadly as she is. She hadn’t needed her knife to commit murder.
A part of her wants to mourn the innocence lost, if only that which had been retained in her image. Cindy isn’t a brute , not like Buggs is. Not like the janitor was. And yet, is she not the one with a bloodied prize of war in her hands?
“–But you have exceeded my expectations as a boyfriend today.”
And that is what’s important. Nothing else matters, not when she has a mission in mind and a boy to entertain herself with. Every day is a new opportunity, a new servant she calls her ‘sweetie’, a new fool to win over. This won’t matter, not in the long run. By tomorrow, she’ll have someone new. Of all her boyfriends thus far, she can at least put this one down as the most helpful.
“That was pretty messed up,” the new kid tells her, but he doesn’t seem all too frazzled. The lack of condemnation continues to soothe her, but she can’t deny the twinge of annoyance that flares within her. Her actions had been no more messed up than that janitor’s . She’s somewhat tempted to offer a heated reminder of just who’d bought her that recipe, just who’d given her a Biscut Ball for lunch.
…Another part of her likes this boyfriend, more than any others she’s had in the past few months, let alone this week. He’s dedicated, resilient, clever, committed. He doesn’t leave. He doesn’t let anyone kill him. She wants to grab his hand in her own and suggest they keep dating for another day, maybe even a week. Wants to ask if he cares about her like she’s beginning to care about him.
But Cindy has learnt restraint, and been practicing it for months. Instead, she stretches bloodstained lips into a shallow, well-rehearsed smile, and dismisses him like the insignificant boy he is. Cindy needs no-one. She’s sure he’ll die soon enough anyway. “I know,” she agrees offhandedly, fishing in her pocket for her gift to him. “But I’ll make it up to you. Here.”
Her fingers are still sticky when she transfers the stem of her offering, shining red slipping onto her boyfriend’s fingers and splattering the petals that represent her love. The plant is fragile as it is beautiful. It won’t last longer than a day until it dies.
“You can have this flower. It’s pretty like me.”
Cindy is very, very good at convincing people she’s pretty. Her skin feels like someone else’s, her insides still writhing and weeping. Her eyes are burning and dead. Her stomach bloats with the blood she’s spilled.
She’ll skip dinner that night, Cindy decides. She knows the rules. If she wants to be pretty, there are sacrifices she has to make.
“Uh… Thanks,” comes the lame reply, entirely underwhelmed by the gift she’s graciously bestowed upon him. He keeps looking at the head she’s holding. At least, Cindy thinks viciously, she’ll have an excellent option for Show And Tell.
Her boyfriend shows the flower when the opportunity arises. It warms her heart in a way Cindy didn’t anticipate, even when Applegate tries to insult his choice. The old cow quiets down quickly enough when Cindy shifts the janitor’s frozen scream to face her.
That night, Cindy holds true to her private vow to miss dinner. Within her stomach, the mutilation of her love forms a twisted marriage with the fruits of her fury, adoring purity mingling with sadistic pleasure until she cannot tell the two apart. She retches into her bathroom sink, nails clinking against the cold ceramic, though nothing but bile reaches her throat.
Cindy is full. Cindy is hollow.
Cindy doesn’t eat much anymore. After this, she doubts she ever will.