02 Jul Guts

Part I

Raina Alvarez woke in a cold sweat, feeling something awful blooming in her belly. It wasn’t pain exactly—not sharp or stabbing—but a thick, bloated discomfort rolling just beneath her ribs, as if something had taken root there. Her sheets were damp beneath her back, and her mouth tasted sour. She instinctively curled forward, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms tightly across her midsection.

Down the hall, someone flushed a toilet. It might have been her brother Mateo; he had been sick two days earlier—vomiting, chills, the works. Her mom said it was a stomach bug and told everyone not to share drinks. However, it was too late for that, as they were a four-person family living in a two-bedroom apartment, and shared space was just part of life.

Another cramp twisted her gut, and she stifled a whimper. The waiting made it worse; not knowing if she was actually going to be sick or if it was just the fear of it was unbearable. She hated that feeling more than anything. Even as a child, the idea of throwing up had terrified her. She remembered sobbing into a toilet seat not because of the sickness itself, but because she couldn’t stop imagining it happening again.

Raina crept out of bed and padded to the bathroom, feeling the cold tile beneath her feet. She knelt in front of the toilet, trembling and waiting. But nothing came up—not even a gag. After ten minutes, she rinsed her mouth with water, returned to bed, and stared at the ceiling until light seeped into the corners of the room.

* * * * * *

“You’re probably just catching what your brother had,” her mother said while scraping scrambled eggs onto four plates at breakfast time. “It’s going around.”

“I don’t want eggs,” Raina murmured.

“You love eggs.”

“I feel… weird. My stomach still hurts.”

Her father looked up from the newspaper, his glasses perched at the end of his nose. “Are you throwing up?”

“No.”

“Then eat something light. How about toast?”

Raina chewed the inside of her cheek and reached for dry cereal instead. Just as she took a bite, another cramp returned, and she stopped moving entirely, her eyes wide and her breathing slowing.

Her mother watched her, spatula in hand. “Are you okay?”

“I think I’ll take it to my room,” Raina said, her voice barely above a whisper.

She dumped the cereal back into the bowl and left the kitchen, moving stiffly as if a sudden movement might summon disaster. Behind her, she heard her dad mutter in concern, “You’d think she was dying.”

* * * * * *

The next two days were mostly spent in her room, curled up in bed with a heating pad. She barely touched food, eating no more than crackers, and she refused to go to school. Strangely enough, she didn’t get in trouble for it. Her parents didn’t argue much, not because they weren’t worried, but because they had already decided it was a passing bug or maybe stress—not a big deal.

“Did something happen at school?” her mom asked on day three.

“No,” Raina replied.

“Are you worried about a test?”

“No.”

“You and Lena aren’t fighting, are you?”

“No,” she snapped, perhaps too quickly. “I just feel weird, okay?”

Her mother knelt beside the bed and touched her forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”

“I don’t need a fever to feel bad.”

“Raina.”

“I’m not sick like that. It’s something else.” She stared at the ceiling again, as if the answers were hidden there.

Her mother sighed and left her alone.

By Monday, her mom insisted she return to school. “You can’t keep missing class. I know you’re scared, but staying home only gives you more time to think about it. Let’s move forward, okay?”

Her stomach lurched at the concept of moving forward. She packed saltines and ginger ale in her lunchbox and promised to call if anything felt worse.

By mid-morning, regret washed over her. The school hallways seemed too loud, and the walls felt like they were closing in. Her stomach, not cramping exactly, felt overly aware—too alive. Every step jostled it, and she swore she could feel it watching her from the inside.

She didn’t speak unless spoken to, smiled when asked, and nodded at jokes. But during science class, while dissecting seed pods, a sudden movement in her belly made her flinch, causing her to knock her pencil to the floor.

“Raina?” Mr. Denton asked. “You alright?”

“I—I need to go to the nurse.”

Lena, sitting one row over, glanced at her with a faint frown, as if Raina were being overly dramatic. She didn’t blame her; after all, that was the common response when someone couldn’t prove their pain.

* * * * * *

Ms. Canter, the school nurse, looked up from her desk, wearing the too-sweet smile of someone who preferred routines over people. “Raina. Another stomachache?”

Raina sat on the crinkling paper bed and nodded in response.

“Have you thrown up?”

“No.”

“Do you have a fever?”

“No.”

“Any diarrhea?”

She flushed and shook her head.

The nurse clicked her pen and began jotting something down. “You’re probably still recovering from that little flu. A few kids had it last week. Just drink your ginger ale, close your eyes, and rest for a bit, okay?”

Raina complied.

She lay there for twenty minutes, motionless, clutching her stomach as if it might try to move again. The lights above buzzed, and the paper beneath her crinkled with each breath.

She heard her own heartbeat, and beneath it—just barely—she sensed the whispering again. This time, it wasn’t just a sound; it had taken on a shape, curling and coiling. Something inside her was nesting.

Part II

Raina didn’t tell her parents about the nurse’s office. She also didn’t mention the whispers or the heartbeat she sometimes felt in her belly when she lay still enough. Not that they would have listened; they had already made up their minds that she was anxious and needed to push through it. So she did. She went to school and sat through classes. She brought her own lunch—unopened—and smiled when spoken to, laughing when it was expected. But something inside her had shifted. It wasn’t a stomachache anymore; it felt more like a presence. And it was getting stronger.

The first time she felt the swirl was during fourth-period history when Mr. Denton was explaining the structure of feudal Japan. She had her hand on her notebook, tracing meaningless circles when her belly gave a strange pull. It wasn’t a cramp or pain, but a turn, like a whirlpool beginning to spin, cold and slow and almost curious. Her fingers twitched, and her pencil dropped to the floor. The swirl tightened for half a second, causing Raina to freeze in her seat.

“You alright?” Lena whispered from beside her. Raina nodded stiffly and leaned forward, her arms crossing over her stomach.

It’s fine, she told herself. Nothing’s happening. Nothing real. But the rest of the period passed in a haze; she didn’t hear a single word of Mr. Denton’s lecture, nor did she remember walking to the next class. She just kept one hand pressed flat against her abdomen as if to keep whatever it was contained. That night, she barely slept, not because of pain but because she could feel it waiting.

By Wednesday, she started skipping lunch altogether. “It’s easier,” she told Lena when asked. “Eating makes it worse.”

Her friend wrinkled her nose. “Worse how?”

“Just… worse.”

Lena didn’t press further, but she chose not to sit with Raina that day. Instead, she joined Trish and her friends near the vending machines, laughing too loud at something Raina couldn’t hear. Raina sat alone in the library, sipping from her warm thermos of broth. The swirl didn’t like it; it began to rise again, curious and irritated, spinning slowly. When she got home, she wrote in her journal:

It’s not in my stomach anymore. It is my stomach. When I don’t eat, it gets angry. But when I do, I don’t feel full; instead, I feel as though it is feeding on me.

She stared at the words and then crossed out the last sentence, thinking it too dramatic. Flipping to another page, she wrote something else:

Stop being afraid. Stop being afraid. Stop being afraid. Stop.

When she returned to it the next morning, the words on the first page had changed and were no longer crossed out. The last line now read: I think it’s learning.

She didn’t remember writing that.

* * * * * *

Thursday was the bathroom incident.

It started like every other day: tightness, then the cold swirl, then the pressure.

In fifth period, she raised her hand and asked to go to the restroom.

Trish snorted two rows back. “Gonna puke again, Princess?”

Raina ignored her and made her way down the hall, holding herself stiff so as not to jostle the thing inside.

She shut the bathroom door, locked the stall, and leaned against the cool metal. Her stomach fluttered, rolled, and shifted beneath her hand. She lifted her shirt and looked down. There was no bruising or swelling, but something in the pit of her belly moved. It wasn’t indigestion or cramps; she knew what those felt like.  This was different. It pressed lightly against the skin from within, just for a moment, like a nudge or a greeting.

Raina bit her lip until it bled, squeezed her eyes shut, and counted to twenty. When she opened them, the stall door in front of her had writing carved into the inside. She hadn’t seen it before, though it might’ve always been there. It read: YOU’RE FEEDING IT. And below that, in the same shaky hand: SOON IT WILL WANT OUT.

She backed out of the stall, heart thudding, and fled the bathroom without washing her hands.

* * * * * *

At dinner that night, her mom tried to make her eat chicken and rice.

“You’re skin and bones, Raina. You need to put something in your stomach.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t been hungry all week,” her mother replied.

“I said I’m fine.”

Her dad looked up from his phone. “Don’t take that tone.”

“I just don’t want to eat.”

“Then at least drink something with calories,” her mom said, pushing a smoothie toward her.

Raina accepted it and took a sip, and then smiled, before excusing herself early. She went to her room and stared at her stomach in the mirror, lifting her shirt again.

She watched for the ripple, waited for the twitch. The nudge. The pressure. But nothing came. Still, she swore her skin looked thinner, almost translucent, as if something were watching her from beneath it.

That night, she dreamed of being in a white room, strapped to a table. She wasn’t afraid—not at first. Then someone in a paper mask leaned over her and whispered, “It doesn’t want to be alone anymore.”

The lights above her buzzed. A scalpel hovered over her abdomen. Then the masked figure sliced her open—but instead of blood, black liquid oozed from the wound. It smelled like rust and meat.

Inside, coiled like a fetus, was a mirror-image duplicate of her. It had the same face and eyes, but was pale and hairless, its mouth slightly open.

It turned its head and blinked, then whispered, “I’m the part you threw away.”

Raina woke with her hands over her stomach and the taste of bile in her throat. She ran to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet, but the expected release never came. Only the swirl, the whisper, and the knowledge that next time, it might not ask.

Part III

The next day, Raina didn’t eat her lunch.

She sat beside Lena beneath the overhang near the cafeteria’s back doors, watching as her friend unwrapped a peanut butter sandwich. The wind tugged at the edges of the wax paper.

“I think you should come to my mom’s potluck this weekend,” Lena said. “It’s Korean food, but she makes dumplings without meat if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Raina gave a brief smile. “I’m not a vegetarian.”

“I didn’t mean that exactly, just… I know food’s been hard lately.”

Raina turned away. The spiral had already begun again, earlier than usual. Just beneath her ribcage, that same sickening motion wound inward, impatient and steady.

“Everything’s been hard lately,” she said quietly.

Lena paused mid-chew. “Is it getting worse?”

“I don’t even know what it is anymore.”

There was a moment of silence between them before Lena spoke again, more cautiously this time. “Did you talk to your therapist about the feeling?”

Raina hesitated. “Not the whole thing.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real.”

Lena didn’t respond right away.

Raina opened her lunchbox, not because she planned to eat, but out of reflex. She had packed apple slices—peeled carefully, with the skins removed and no bruises.

As soon as she lifted the lid, a strange odor reached her. It wasn’t sour, and it didn’t smell rotten. It was something different, damp and clinging.

She blinked at the fruit. The apples didn’t look right. They shifted slightly where they sat, not dramatically so—just enough to get her attention.

She snapped the lid closed.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, her voice hoarse.

Lena stared. “Did something move?”

“Don’t,” Raina said as she shoved the box into her bag. “Just… don’t.”

* * * * * *

That night, Trish Moreno left school early.

By morning, everyone in class had heard the story. Trish had collapsed during gym, pale and clutching her stomach, then vomited in the hallway outside the locker room.

“She almost made it to the trash can,” Carlos Tran said. “Still gross.”

“No, dude,” Riley corrected. “She didn’t make it. I saw it. It got all over her shoes.”

Their classmates groaned and laughed in disgust.

Raina didn’t laugh with them. She kept her eyes on her notebook, doing her best not to imagine the scene.

And yet, despite everything, a strange calm settled over her.

She wasn’t happy, and she didn’t feel proud. But the silence inside her was unfamiliar. For the first time in days, the swirl had gone still.

Something shifted inside her. It wasn’t guilt, not exactly.

* * * * * *

That evening, Raina overheard her mother on the phone. Her voice was quiet but strained.

“She hasn’t eaten a proper meal in nearly a week,” she said, unaware Raina was listening. “This isn’t the flu. I think it’s anxiety. Or maybe something worse.”

There was a pause as the person on the other end replied.

“Yes, she has a therapist,” her mother continued. “She just won’t talk. Merle says that’s normal, but—”

There was another pause.

“I don’t know. I just want her back.”

Before she could hear more, Raina stepped away. She didn’t feel angry, or even as, but something unfamiliar was beginning to form deep in her gut.

It wasn’t watching her. It was becoming her.

* * * * * *

In her next session, Dr. Merle gave her instructions.

“I’d like you to draw it,” she said.

“Draw what?” Raina asked.

“The fear,” Merle said gently. “You don’t need to explain it if you can’t. Just draw it.”

Raina hesitated for a long moment. Then she picked up a black crayon.

She drew a shape—rounded, tapering at one end, curled inward like a fetus or a worm. But instead of eyes, it had a single, oversized mouth. The mouth had no lips, no clear expression—just gaping and still.

Dr. Merle studied the drawing. “Have you seen this in a dream?”

Raina shook her head.

“Do you feel it inside you?”

After another pause, Raina nodded. “Yes.”

Dr. Merle’s expression didn’t change, but she leaned back slightly in her chair. As if gaining distance might help her understand it better.

“Do you want it to go away?”

Raina didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “I don’t think I get to decide.”

“That’s not true,” Merle replied.

“It is,” Raina said. “Because I didn’t invite it in. It came when I got scared.”

“What about now?”

Raina stared at her drawing again.

“It’s not just in my stomach anymore.”

Dr. Merle said nothing, waiting.

Raina looked up.

“It’s learning how to be me.”

* * * * * *

That night, Raina had a dream about her locker at school.

Only it wasn’t made of metal. It was soft and biological. The door was made of flesh, and the hinges resembled cartilage. When she opened it, her backpack was sitting inside, wet and faintly pulsing.

She unzipped the bag. Inside it, she found her lunchbox.

When she opened the lunchbox, she saw a small, wet lump of flesh curled around an apple core. It turned its face upward. A mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Then it smiled.

She woke drenched in sweat, her pillow damp and her fists clenched tightly. Her fingernails had left pale crescents in her palms.

She got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. After switching on the light, she lifted her shirt and examined her stomach in the mirror. It was still flat, still hers.

She forced herself back to bed, where she slept restlessly until morning.

* * * * * *

At school the following day, Lena was absent from homeroom.

Trish, however, had returned. She looked exhausted. Her skin had lost color, and her eyes were puffy. She moved as if her body wasn’t fully connected to her mind.

When Raina passed her in the hallway, Trish glanced to the side. Her lips twitched, but not into a smile or a sneer. It was closer to acknowledgment, as if she understood something.

In second period, Raina opened her notebook and froze. Three new lines had been added in handwriting that didn’t belong to her:

Don’t be afraid.
It’s safer when you’re scared.
It feeds better that way.

She shut the notebook with a loud snap and raised her hand.

“Can I use the bathroom?” she muttered.

As she exited the classroom and turned down the hallway, she passed Trish again—this time near the lockers.

Trish gave her a sleepy, crooked smile.

“Careful,” she whispered.

Raina stopped and turned around. “What?”

“You’re leaking.”

Raina stared. “What does that mean?”

Trish didn’t answer. She simply walked away, her hands tucked in her jacket pockets. As she went, she whistled softly.

The tune sounded familiar, but Raina couldn’t place it.

Only then did she realize her hand was pressed against her stomach again.

The swirl hadn’t returned. Something else had taken its place—something lighter and more alert.

And it was hungry.

Part IV
Raina started writing everything down. She didn’t know why. Perhaps speaking out loud felt too exposed, or maybe part of her didn’t want to acknowledge how much she had already accepted. The journal initially felt safe, but that sense of security soon faded. She had had it since the fourth grade; it featured unicorns on the cover, and the lock had been broken long ago. Back then, she wrote about her dreams, cartoons, and silly arguments with her brother. Now, the pages were filled with a different kind of story.

DAY 9

I felt it in my sleep, something shifting. It wasn’t pain; it wasn’t digestion. It stretched, and I dreamed it was uncoiling. I could feel its shape and its smile.

The next morning, she turned the page and froze. She hadn’t written the next entry. At least, she didn’t remember writing it.

DAY 10

I’m almost ready. Thank you for feeding me. You’re so good and so soft. I don’t want to leave.

Raina slammed the journal shut and threw it across the room. It hit the dresser with a dull slap and fell open, face-down. From her bed, she stared at it, as if it might get up and crawl. The words were written in her handwriting, or something close to it—slightly crooked, the letters too round, almost like a child’s. They resembled her earlier penmanship.

She didn’t eat that day—not even broth. The hunger came hard, gnawing and dry, but she welcomed it. Let her body ache; let her stomach fold inward. Maybe if she starved herself, whatever was inside would also starve. But the swirl didn’t fade; it sharpened.

By late afternoon, agitation joined the hunger twisting her gut. It rolled like a tide, demanding more. She clutched her abdomen and curled up on her bed. Her lips felt dry, and her head throbbed.

Then, the knock came: three short taps at her bedroom door. “Raina?” her mom called. “Dr. Merle is here. She made a house visit today.” Raina didn’t move.

Another knock followed, softer this time. “I’m coming in.” The door opened. Dr. Merle stepped in slowly, as though she belonged there, having done it a hundred times before.

Raina sat up. “Why are you—?”

“You missed our appointment this week,” Merle said, setting her coat over the desk chair. “Your mother is worried, and so am I.”

“I’m not okay,” Raina said, her words spilling out quickly. “There’s something in me. It’s not just metaphor or feelings; it’s real. I didn’t ask for it. It’s there.”

Merle nodded, neither shocked nor disbelieving, as if she had expected it.

Raina blinked. “You believe me?”

“I believe you’re not the first,” Merle replied.

“What?”

Dr. Merle lowered herself onto the foot of the bed and placed a small cloth-wrapped bundle on the blanket between them. Unfolding it slowly, she revealed three objects: a tiny mesh pouch filled with dried herbs, a smooth black river stone with a sigil carved into it, and a stub of a red wax candle.

“This helped one of my old patients,” she said gently. “You don’t have to use them, but you’ll know if it’s time.”

“What is it?”

“Not an exorcism and not a cure. It’s simply a way to choose.”

“Choose what?”

Merle looked at her evenly. “Whether you want to keep it or let it go.”

Raina remained silent, her fingers brushing the pouch. It smelled faintly of sage, with something bitter underneath.

“You’ve been feeding it,” Merle said. “With fear and silence. That’s how they grow. They thrive when we suppress things.”

“But I never let it in.”

“I know,” Merle said as she stood. “But sometimes, that doesn’t matter.”

* * * * * *

That night, Raina lit the candle not for the ritual, but simply for the light. She sat in bed with the journal open, flipping backward through the pages and trying to find where it had begun—the shift, the tone, the voice.

Midway through the older entries, before the apple slices and before Trish’s stomach bug, she found an unfamiliar line written in faint pencil: “Do you remember what you swallowed?” She didn’t remember, not really—not one moment. Yet deep down, she knew she had swallowed it years ago. She had swallowed fear, shame, and disgust, perhaps all of it. She had kept it down and told no one because it felt worse to throw it up, worse to let it out. And now, it had a home.

Her stomach woke her just after 2 a.m. It wasn’t a swirl or hunger. It was movement, a sensation that felt like something pressing against the walls of her abdomen. It was not cramping or pain; it was stretching. She went to the bathroom and pulled up her shirt. There were no bruises or marks, but her skin appeared thinner and more veined. In the mirror, she turned to the side to inspect her profile. For just a moment, her belly bulged, rounded out as if something curled beneath the surface. And then she saw it—the vague shape of a curled body, a head, two arms, and a mouth pressed against the inside, grinning.

Part V

Raina didn’t go to school the next day, and she didn’t tell her parents why. She sat at the kitchen table, picking at dry toast while her mom hovered anxiously in the background, pretending to clean. Her dad had already left for work, and the apartment felt hollow without the usual bustle, as if something had shifted beneath the floorboards that no one dared mention.

Every bite of toast felt like swallowing a sponge soaked in dread. She chewed, swallowed, and listened for a response. There it was, not pain but approval—a faint warm lurch beneath her ribs, like a cat stretching in a sunbeam.

Setting the toast down, she went to the bathroom and locked the door. Lifting her shirt, she noticed that the skin across her belly had changed again. There were still no bruises or swelling, but when she pressed her palm flat against her stomach, it felt as though it was pushing back gently. It was not hard or violent, just a soft, deliberate pressure, like a hand mirroring her touch.

Raina stepped back from the mirror, but she didn’t scream. Instead, she watched and waited for it to move again.

* * * * * *

That night, she dreamed of herself, not metaphorically or as a symbolic stand-in, but her—standing on the other side of her bedroom. The Other Raina looked identical in every way except for her eyes, which were slightly off-center and black all the way through.

The Other Raina stepped forward slowly with her arms at her sides, tilting her head. “You made me,” she said. Raina stood frozen at the edge of her bed. “I didn’t—”

“You fed me.”

“I didn’t know.”

The Other smiled, not cruelly and not kindly, just knowingly. “You kept me in. Now I get to be out.”

When Raina tried to run, the dream melted around her like wax, leaving her unable to move her legs. The Other opened her mouth, revealing a hollow abyss filled with depth instead of a tongue or teeth. Inside, a swirling, slick tunnel echoed with her own voice: Let me stay.

Raina woke up standing in front of the bathroom mirror, clutching the river stone in her right hand.

* * * * * *

She didn’t remember getting up or walking, but the candle from Dr. Merle’s bundle was already burning in the sink, its steady flame undisturbed by any breeze. Raina opened her journal to a blank page and pressed the stone against it. For a moment, nothing happened. Then she blinked, and new words appeared—not ink or graphite but etched themselves in slowly like frost forming:

You said you were afraid of throwing up, but you never said why.

She dropped the stone, and it hit the tile with a dull tick before rolling under the toilet. Instead of going after it, she flipped backward through the journal again, heart racing.

Page after page contained writing—some hers and some not—all intertwined in a looping back-and-forth, a conversation she hadn’t known she was having. Then she found it:

I’m not the part that’s broken; I’m the part you gave away.

Raina stared at the words. They weren’t angry; they were lonely.
Later that evening, Raina sat across from her mother on the couch. The television was on but muted, displaying a cooking show filled with sizzling sounds and applause.

Raina spoke without looking up. “Do you remember when I got sick in second grade?”

Her mom glanced over. “What?”

“The field trip. I threw up on the bus.”

“Oh—right. I forgot about that.”

“You told me not to talk about it.”

Her mom laughed softly. “Well, honey, you were embarrassed. You didn’t want anyone to—”

“No,” Raina said, her voice steady. “You told me, ‘Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.’”

A silence followed that wasn’t angry or awkward; it was filled with shock. Her mother regarded her as though she had just been caught sleepwalking.

“I… I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.”

They watched the screen for a while, observing a celebrity chef folding egg whites.

“Raina?”

She remained silent.

Her mother didn’t press further.

In her room that night, Raina stood before the mirror again. She took off her shirt. Her stomach appeared smooth and pale, illuminated only by the flickering candle still burning in its saucer on the desk.

This time, she didn’t wait for the ripple; she called to it. “I know you’re there.”

The movement came—slow and curious, like something stretching after a long nap. She placed her hand on her stomach, and it pushed back gently, like a child.

Her reflection blinked out of sync, and the Other Raina stared back at her, hand pressed to the glass.

With her mouth closed, the voice came anyway: “I don’t want to hurt you. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Raina blinked hard, and something inside her blinked back.

Part VI

Raina’s mother made stew the next day. It was real food, featuring meat and carrots in a thick broth, along with fresh bread from the bakery around the corner. The aroma filled the room, evoking the feeling of home, reminiscent of Sundays before everything became complicated.

“Please eat,” her mother urged, setting the bowl in front of her.

Raina stared at it, feeling a twitch in her stomach—not quite hunger and not exactly dread, but something in between: curiosity. It was as if her stomach were watching, too.

She picked up her spoon and took a bite. It was warm and salty—real. Her stomach settled. She took another bite, and then another. For a full minute, nothing happened.

Her mom sighed with relief. “See? We’ll get you back to normal in no time.”

Raina nodded silently. But twenty minutes later, the nausea crept in like a relentless tide. This was not the usual swirl. It felt heavier.

She barely made it to the bathroom before dropping to her knees. Her mouth opened, but no relief came. She dry-heaved until her ribs ached. Her throat burned, her eyes stung, and her stomach felt rounder than before—not bloated, but occupied.

Then, something shifted inside her. She felt it turn, a full-bodied twist, as if someone were changing positions in a sleeping bag.

She tried to scream, but the sound never escaped; her throat closed off the noise.

In the mirror above the sink, her reflection smiled, yet she was not smiling.

* * * * * *

She decided not to tell her parents, not after that experience.

Instead, she said she was tired and suggested that maybe she had caught another bug, claiming it wasn’t a big deal. They believed her, as accepting any other possibility would have required too much energy.

That night, she skipped dinner and sat in bed with the wax candle lit again and the pouch of herbs beneath her pillow.

The swirl had returned, but it was slower now. Sometimes, when it paused, she could sense it listening, waiting.

She opened the journal, finding that the next page had already written itself.

DAY 11

Thank you. You are getting stronger. I am getting closer.

I don’t want to leave. You are the safest place I have ever known.

She felt an urge to cry, but the tears didn’t come. Inside her, something didn’t feel sad; it felt understood.

* * * * * *
She stopped going to school altogether. The swirl didn’t like noise or crowds. It preferred the quiet of her room, the steady rhythm of her breathing, the stillness surrounding her.

Dr. Merle came again. This time, she didn’t bring the bundle. Instead, she sat across from Raina on the floor, legs crossed, remaining silent for a long time.

“Have you named it?” she finally asked.

Raina looked up, confused. “What?”

“The thing inside.”

Raina hesitated. “No.”

“Has it named you?”

She didn’t answer.

Merle nodded slowly. “Do you know what it wants?”

“To stay.”

“And what do you want?”

Raina’s stomach stirred, just once enough to make her flinch. “I want it to stop being me.”

Merle leaned forward. “Then you have a choice.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You always do.”

Raina stared at her. “You talk like this has happened before.”

“It has.”

“And?”

“Some choose to feed it,” Merle said. “Others learn to starve it.”

Raina shook her head. “It doesn’t let me starve it. I’ve tried. It makes me—”

She stopped, and Merle waited for her to continue.

“It makes me want things I’m afraid of,” Raina finished. “Like food or people. And then it learns them and uses them against me.”

“Because you’re not rejecting it.”

“I am.”

“You’re protecting it.”

The words struck something deep within her.

“I’m not!”

But even as she said it, Raina felt her hand drift to her stomach, a soft and almost motherly touch.

Merle’s eyes softened. “You don’t have to love it,” she said gently. “But you do need to let it go.”

* * * * * *

That night, Raina dreamed of a staircase leading downward. She walked it barefoot, carrying the journal close against her chest. Each step was slick and warm underfoot.

At the bottom, she entered a room that held a crib. Inside it lay something swaddled in damp paper and knotted hair—a tiny shape curled inward and breathing softly.

It looked up as she entered and opened its mouth.

“Don’t kill me. You made me.”

Raina knelt beside it.

“I didn’t mean to.”

The thing blinked once.

“You didn’t mean to keep me, either. But here I am.”

Raina reached for it, her hands shaking. Just as she was about to touch it, it bit her.

She woke to the taste of iron in her mouth. Blood. She had bitten her tongue in her sleep, and her stomach pulsed once beneath the sheets. It felt hard, as if issuing a warning.

Part VII

Raina didn’t light the candle this time because she didn’t need to. The room already glowed with a low warmth, a pulse behind the walls, as if her bedroom had begun to breathe—slow, damp exhalations rising from the floorboards.

She hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, and her lips were cracked. Her stomach felt like a shriveled drum beneath her ribs, but inside, something was thriving. It coiled contentedly, occasionally rolling to remind her of its presence.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor with the bundle from Dr. Merle beside her, she placed the pouch of herbs, the river stone, and the wax stub of a candle she hadn’t dared to burn again.

She didn’t need ritual; she needed release. She needed this to end, and deep down, she knew what that would take.

* * * * * *

Raina opened the journal, and the page began to darken. The words rose like bruises from the paper:

“If you push me out, you’ll be hollow again. You won’t like what’s left of you.”

She flipped to a blank page and wrote carefully, “I don’t need you to like me. I need you to leave me.”

Then she stood up, unfolded the pouch of herbs, and poured a circle around her. She set the candle in the middle and lit it. The flame wavered, and the air thickened as from within her, she felt a twitch, then another.

Her body clenched, and she doubled over, dropping to her knees with her palms flat against the floor. The pressure in her stomach surged upward, no longer swirling. It was climbing, like a rope being pulled through her from within, each knot scraping along her insides.

Her mouth opened involuntarily, drawing in a thick, wet gulp of air. Then, nothing. Her fingers dug into the wood, and her back arched. It wasn’t coming up; it was refusing, not wanting to go.

* * * * * *

Raina thought of the bathtub. She stumbled there, half-blind and clutching her stomach. Turning the water on full blast, the scalding heat fogged the mirror, blurring her reflection, but she could still see the smile behind the fog.

“It’s time,” she whispered, feeling the thing inside her twist violently in protest. Dropping to her knees, she forced her fingers into her throat. Once, twice. On the third try, she felt something shift.

It wasn’t bile or food; it was form. It tore upward, shredding through her throat and stretching the corners of her mouth. Then she vomited something alive—a wet mass hit the porcelain, flailing and struggling to rise.

Gasping and coughing blood, she wiped it from her chin and looked down. There it was—her. Small, emaciated, pale as candle wax, with stringy dark hair clinging to a featureless face and eyes that seemed just slightly too big.

It coughed once, then smiled. “Now you know,” it said. “You can’t be alone either.”

* * * * * *

Raina stared at the mirror, where her flesh-like reflection blinked slowly, legs curled beneath it like a newborn deer.

“You called me,” it said. “Every time you held it in, every time you lied and smiled and insisted you were fine. Every time you bit your tongue until it bled and assured yourself it would pass.”

Raina reached for the faucet, noticing the tub was half-filled.

It flinched and said, “Don’t.”

“I have to,” she replied.

“You’ll miss me.”

“No,” Raina whispered. “I’ll remember you.”

It stared at her for a moment, its eyes unreadable. Then its mouth twisted—not into a smile but into something broken.

“You’ll just create another one!” it hissed. “One day, you’ll get scared again. You’ll hold it in, feed it, and need it.”

Raina didn’t respond. She shoved it under the water.

It thrashed, screamed, kicked her in the arm, and bit her wrist, causing blood to slick the porcelain.

She held it down, and it stopped moving after thirty seconds.

She maintained her grip for another thirty, then another sixty, until the water grew still.

At that moment, the thing inside her was gone.

Raina remained on the bathroom floor for what felt like hours while the candle burned out in the other room.

Eventually, her mother knocked.

“Raina? Are you okay?”

She opened her mouth to answer. At first, nothing came. Then, finally, she said, “Yes.”

There was a pause before she added, “I think I’m hungry.”

Part VIII

The bathtub was empty in the morning, devoid of water, blood, or any pale, half-formed figure curled in the corner. Only faint pink stains circled the drain. Her mother walked past the bathroom without a word, humming and sipping coffee. Raina stood in the doorway, staring into the porcelain basin as if it were a grave that had been meticulously swept clean. Whatever had been there was gone, but she hadn’t dreamed it. The bite on her wrist remained as evidence.

Her appetite returned slowly, drifting back like fog, quiet and tentative. She ate dry toast without fear and sipped broth without flinching. By the end of the week, she managed to eat rice, a banana, and half a hard-boiled egg. There were no swirling sensations, whispers, or pressure. Only silence lingered, along with a kind of emptiness that did not demand to be filled. There was just space.

She returned to school the following Monday. Some kids stared with concern, while others were merely curious. Trish completely avoided her, creating a wide berth when they crossed paths in the hall. Lena waved across the cafeteria, but did not come over. Raina didn’t blame her; she still didn’t feel normal. It was as if she were wearing her own face for the first time in a long while, and while her skin felt like hers again, she had to remember how to move in it.

* * * * * *

That week, she brought the journal to her therapy session. Dr. Merle accepted it without comment and began to read the entries Raina highlighted—the voices that weren’t hers, the dreams, and the messages. She didn’t scoff or rationalize; instead, she turned the pages slowly and nodded.

“I’m certain it’s done,” Raina said.

Merle looked up, asking, “Are you sure?”

“I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t feel it.”

“Is there no more movement?”

“There’s no more anything.”

“Good.” Merle set the journal aside. “But the thing you created—whatever it was—did not grow by itself.”

Raina nodded. “I fed it.”

Merle arched an eyebrow. “Not solely with fear.”

“I know.”

“With silence, too.”

Raina cast her gaze downward. “It felt easier at the time. Until it didn’t.”

They sat in that quiet space for a while, neither feeling the need to break the silence. Finally, Merle said, “You will still feel scared sometimes.”

“I know.”

“And it might come back.”

Raina met her gaze with conviction. “It won’t.”

“Not the same one,” Merle agreed. “But others may try. Fear can be cunning in that way.”

“I’ll speak up next time,” Raina promised. “Even if it’s ugly. Even if it’s loud.”

Merle smiled. “Good. Because the ones who remain silent are the easiest to fill.”

* * * * * *

At home, she opened the journal one last time. Most of the pages were now blank, and the messages had vanished, along with the thing that had written them. Only her pen lines remained. She flipped back to the earliest entries, recalling the messy loops, the scared questions, and the pleading phrases. She had expected to feel embarrassed, cringey, or immature, but instead, she felt a sense of validity.

It was evidence that she had been afraid, held it in, and survived. Picking up her pen, she began to write on a new page: There was something inside me. I thought it made me weak, but I was strong enough to carry it and to let it go.

After closing the journal, she set it on the shelf, leaving it there.

In the weeks that followed, things got easier as she began to eat, sleep, and even laugh—a genuine laugh or two. Trish stopped speaking to Lena, and Lena slowly drifted back toward Raina, as friends often do after weathering separate storms. They didn’t discuss what had happened. Not yet.

However, during lunch, Lena would occasionally glance at Raina, her eyes flicking down to her tray, and Raina would nod reassuringly, communicating that it was okay and that she was okay. For now, that was enough.

One night, while alone in her room starting her homework, she sat at her desk beneath a flickering overhead light. Not thinking much of it, she opened her binder, only to have a scrap of paper slip out. It was unfamiliar to her, clearly torn from the journal, and it bore no writing—just a faint, greasy smudge in one corner that looked like a fingerprint. It was too small to be hers and certainly too round and soft.

She stared at it for a long time, then picked it up and turned it over. On the back, written in faint red ink, was the phrase: You emptied me once. Don’t get full again.

Her hand trembled briefly, but she quickly tore the note in half, tore it again, and tossed it in the wastebasket before returning to her math.