WARNING: EATING DISORDER MENTIONED
I live in a home where vanity is placed a step above health. I have a wife and teenage daughter, and let’s just say I’m not exactly pleased with the example my significant other is setting. She’s had over a dozen plastic surgeries, mostly around the face and neck. She’d had breast implants last year, but was forced to remove them due to repeated infection. The woman actually flew to Brazil for a facelift. Brazil. I’d never heard of such a thing. She’s been pumped with so much botox that her forehead is basically a pincushion at this point. Her hair is bleached once a week. She tends to sleep in her makeup. It’s not a pretty sight.
Now that our daughter has become a little heavier, my wife has become an even bigger pain in the ass. When she’s not constantly suggesting workout schedules to the poor girl, she’s replacing half of her meals with diet shakes and raw vegetables. I can see the hurt in my daughter’s expression, and as her waistline swells her self-esteem deflates. I’d watched enough talk shows to know that it was an eating disorder waiting to happen. I was in the process of repeating this to my wife yesterday over dinner with friends. This time she had a new angle, however.
“I’m telling you that girl is hiding something,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yeah, well maybe she’s hiding snickers bars. You don’t know. Christ, just leave it alone.”
“With all of the help I’ve given she should be losing weight right now…and she’s been awfully quiet lately. Really not like her usual self,” turning to the other couple at the table.
I held my hand in the air. “No, no. She’s not behaving like herself because you’re being way too hard on her. You know how sensitive young girls and women are about their weight, and you just nag her endlessly.”
“You wanna know what I think’s going on?” she asked with a hooked eyebrow.
“Not particularly.”
“That girl is fucking pregnant.”
I felt my heart jitter in my chest, and immediately I started to deny it. I thought about my daughter’s slightly distended belly and my mouth went dry. My wife’s friend across the table changed subjects mercifully, but the night was effectively ruined.
This morning I took my daughter to the doctor. As she was being examined, I could only think of how her life might now be destroyed, gone and sucked dry by a child. I was just too young to be a grandfather. When the doctor came back in with the results, I was holding my little girl’s hand, shaking.
He spoke in a rough baritone and seemed very authoritative in the clean white coat. I could tell immediately he didn’t bring good news. “Well, you’re daughter is definitely not pregnant.”
A little sigh of relief came out of me, but I knew he wasn’t done talking.
“Polygonoporus Giganticus.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a massive species of tapeworm…I would say the one inside your daughter is approaching a hundred feet in length and I really don’t know HOW she could’ve contracted this.”
I immediately felt sheer horror. I didn’t know what to say or think. I spoke with a trembling voice. “Have you seen anything like this before?”
His face suggested that he hadn’t. “In some parts of the world people actually purchase these for weight loss. Really sick stuff.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, in South America. Brazil, more specifically.”
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written by Otis Mari
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