Writing Prompt: I am that afraid I will die while spending time with someone I don't like

 by Julia Davies

Yes, I am talking to you.  Look at you, you sprawl there on the sofa.  Sprawl doesn't begin to cover it, you slump, you spill, you slouch.  You are a sibilant sloven.  Your feet up on the furniture, resting on the rubbish, remains of letters, magazines, chocolate wrappers.  

You sag.  You age.

It's not langour, it's way beyond that, it's a life draining laziness beyond comprehension.  Why would anyone choose to live like that?  Why do you choose to live like that?  Oh, you don't choose it?  You just can't be bothered to change it.

Billowing flesh, pale and pasty pink.  Hide it under the throw, pretend it isn't there as you reach for the next packet of crisps, the next gulp of alcohol.

The German word for lazy is "faul" and you know you are.

Sluggish?  That doesn't sound too bad, a slow pulse but basically everything under control.  Slug-like is more like it.  Fat, seeping, sliding through life at the pace of a snail without even the excuse of your house on your shoulders.

No wonder no-one comes around.  No wonder there is no-one who wants to probe your fleshy crevices, touch your pallid swollen skin.  And you know being so fat makes those folds fleshier and deeper, the journey into your cunt a longer route to pleasure, but no-one else wants to know that now.  Hell, most of the time even you don't fucking bother.

Get up off the sofa and go look in the mirror.  Not via the fridge again!  Go see yourself.  Really see yourself, not glance and see the memory of the girl you once were.  She was 20 years ago and is lost to you now.  Look at yourself, see what you really look like.  Nice eyes, yeah, but how many chins?  Your tiny mouth looks even smaller against the expanse of your cheeks, unhealthily flushed.  

Will you do something about it this time?  Will you?  Or will you just wonder absently where the gym card is, or whether your swimming costume would still fit?  And make a half hearted resolution to go into town and buy some newer bigger clothes?

My face in the mirror, I wonder vaguely what it would be like to finish it, to put an end to it, to kill this person that I don't like, even if it means I die with her.  But I know I won't do it, too much effort.

jkdavies is a practised reader & practising writer living in Germany.  She doesn't have sneakers, but trainers.  They are not her favourite anything as she only wears them to go to the gym.  That's once so far this year... so fucking what, it's only July...