Spoon

Once upon a time, I was fat. I had been a fat little boy who turned into a fat little man who turned into a barely walking bestial glob that barely stood at five-foot and a half who couldn’t put down a spoon. I weighed thirty-eight stone when I was just twenty-five years old. Nowadays you could scoop me up with an arm and carry me like a bulimic suitcase made of loose skin and dirt. I blamed my late wife. She was a feeder, and in the five years I was with her, I had gained eighteen stone and an equal amount of hatred for her. She would hit me when I wouldn’t eat, force-feed me when I still wouldn’t, and reward me with fantastical feasts when I had gained a suitable amount of weight. I peaked at thirty-eight stone, then lost half a stone when I became ill. To make a long story short, she left me with nothing but agoraphobia and thoughts of suicide.

A month later, the house was repossessed. Imagine my fear: agoraphobic and just waiting for the day where I became homeless, for the day where I would be forced to enter the outside world I had become to fear and loath even more than the house with my own blood spilt up the walls.

And yet, I was now thirty-five years old and had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Granted, I had been homeless for ten years, living off what I found in bins, was given by kind strangers few in number, and my own wits. I had come so far. But now, I was done. I was tired of being spat on, glared at, beaten, having pennies pelted at me, and I was tired of having nothing and being completely unable to do anything about it.

It must have been when I saw my ex-wife. She looked right at me, right into my eyes, peering into my soul and then she looked away. Barely containing her disgust. Didn’t even recognise me.

I stole a pad and a pen from some shop, having ran faster than I had ever ran in my life, and I wrote down my final thoughts. I pocketed the pad, chucked the pen, and sat beside a tree in a secluded part of town. Then, I tied a shoelace tight around my saggy, left bicep and watched as my skin turned an even paler shade of white than my starvation had already made me. I pulled the skin on my arm taut and plunged the needle into a revealed vein, transmitting what I’d hoped was a lethal dose of heroin into my bloodstream. I was already addicted. I remember once I saw a spoon as something very different; something good and wholesome. Then spoons became something I loathed living with my ex-wife. Now, my spoon had been very much needed until today.

I remember, between the days where I was beaten and force fed and screamed at, that I would sit there and think that if there was just one thing I could do right now, it would have been to take a needle, fill it with heroin, and ram it into my wife’s throat and watch as she overdosed. If only that were a memory. But she was the only thing missing in the scenario I’d dreamed of, and so I supposed I may as well just go out on my terms. To go out with a feeling of what I’d hoped would be euphoria in a world where I don’t remember ever being graced with such feeling. I would die soon.

Five-foot and a half, eight stone, bald from malnutrition, and looking like someone had collected the skin off a dozen corpses and glued them onto me. My last moments would be spent sat in silent euphoria as I slowly became completely uncomprehending of anything. I would smile, just happy that I would soon no longer be able to think.

I died as I had lived: with a spoon in my hand.