She pulled up her legs against her fragile body and shivered. Her heartbeats were louder than before. It was all in her head, the headaches, the pressure of being young and beautiful. It had driven her mad, but right now she didn’t realize what she was doing or where she was headed. Every night she heard the voices in her head telling her that she was ugly, fat and unworthy of this life. She could only breathe when her stomach was empty, she told herself. In the end, that was true. 

She woke up with a scream. A nightmare had woken her again. The usual one, being fat and ugly. She cried til her eyes dried up. She froze when she heard footsteps outside of her door. Someone opened the door and walked right in. She closed her eyes, in fear of seeing something strange.“Amara...”  Someone whispered her name. She recognized the voice. It was Ana! Her playmate, her best friend, her lover. The only one who believed her when she said that she was fat. It is the truth, she would say, and Ana would nod. 

She knew that she wasn’t the only one they held prisoner. There were a few others, in the cells next to hers. The whole corridor filled with cells, and in those cells, there were people screaming all the time. Horrific stories about how their mothers’ force fed them and cut them off from reality by bringing them here. It all sounded so awful. The only reason she was here was Ana. When Amara talked about her, no one believed a word that she said. She was called ”crazy”, ”weird” and other similar words before they brought her here. Now she was just eating pills and drinking water. A lot of laxatives, mostly because she lost a lot of weight by taking dumps all the time. Unfortunately, the people who ”work here” found out that she used them, so now she’s just drinking water again. They took away her clothes to make her eat, but that was a pathetic try, she thought to herself as she drank a glass of water.

All of a sudden she heard a scream, and someone came rushing towards her. It was one of the keepers! He quickly opened the cell and dragged her out of there. She tried to resist but she was too weak. She screamed and screamed, but when she looked around no one moved, no one reacted! This was when she started to scratch this horrible man with her sharp nails. He roared as she reached for his eyes. She used to sharpen her nails by scratching the walls in her cell. It seemed as if it was all worth it. Everything came down to this very moment, when she was about to scratch someone’s eyes out to save her own life. She first scratched his eyelids ‘til there was no eyelids left. By now, he had of course let her go. But she just went crazy. She scratched and scratched, screaming while her hands moved faster than lightning, killing everyone and everything in her way. Now he just lay there, all bloody and cold. She stopped for a moment to look around again. She stood up, and a frenetic cleansing of her hands began. She tried to get the blood to disappear by licking it away, but it was stuck on her hands. It all happened so fast, and her emotions hadn’t caught up with her just yet. She looked at the awful mess on the floor and sighed. If he had only left her alone that day...

The next day everything was changed. The keepers had moved her to another cell, and she had this weird suit on that made her frustrated and angry. She couldn’t move her arms. The keepers called it a straitjacket. This jacket was very uncomfortable, and she guessed that was exactly what they intended her to be – uncomfortable. She hadn’t asked for this! Really, she hadn’t. He just took her, she had to do something, didn’t she? She took a look around and saw nothing but soft walls without any windows. She felt alone and quite scared, but she knew that Ana would always be there for her. Although she didn’t hear her or see her at the moment. Where was she? She heard some voices outside of her door, she could catch a few sentences, but most of it was blur.

– What happened to Amara? Did she hurt anyone?
– Well yes, she killed one of the patients, Caél. He escaped from his cell and managed to get the keys to all the cells. I guess he held some kind of a grudge against her. Amara is shocked of course. Still, she murdered him, even in self-defence, that’s a crime here.
– Wow, that’s awful. What will happen to her?
– I tried to reach her parents, but they won’t answer their phone. So I don’t really know where to go from here. Also, Amara has been talking about her friend Ana a lot lately. I think I will increase her dosage of Clozapine, then maybe she will forget about Ana.

She couldn’t believe it. They thought she was just imagining Ana! Hadn’t they seen her? Amara saw her all the time. Except today, something odd had happened, she decided. Maybe they had tricked her in to taking those weird pills. They made Ana disappear, and when Ana was gone, Amara ate.
When it was dinner time, Amara got a plate shoved in under her door. She used to ignore the food, but today when her friend was gone, she reached for the plate as soon as the keeper had let go of it. This was her first binging since she came here. After a few minutes, the plate was empty. She felt the urge to ask for more, but she knew that now she would throw up. She was right. A second or two after she had sat down on her bed, she started to puke. She knew it was for her best of course, but it always felt so disgusting at first. The floor was now covered in her stomach’s contents. She lay down on the bed and cried as the keepers came rushing to clean it up. When they had left, she noticed that one of the keepers had dropped something on the floor. It was some kind of a bottle with something in it. She quickly picked up the bottle and hid it under the cover. She took a look at it and opened it while lying under the cover. She was amazed to find out that it was pills. There was no label on it, so she didn’t know what kind of pills it was, but still! She took one and as soon as it had touched her tongue, she felt happier, more alive. It tasted really sweet and sugary. She took more and more pills, they tasted better and better for each pill that she took. At last, the bottle was empty and she felt her limbs go numb. She lay in bed and yawned. She felt so tired. So tired...

She was pale. Cold chills ran down her back and she was sweating. She was strapped to a stretcher that held her completely still. She felt very calm although she couldn’t move. A lot of keepers and nurses were around her. Rushing with her stretcher to all the rooms in the building. She was a bit confused. What had happened? She didn’t have to wonder any further since the nurses had seen her wake up. – You tried to kill yourself, and we saved your life. You took a whole bottle of pills and we had to pump your stomach. So now you will feel very hungry. And you know honey... It’s no use looking skinny and beautiful when you’re dead.

She was right. What had she done to herself? She was destroyed, damaged and out of control. The nice nurse was right. She didn’t want to die, she just wanted to be pretty. It turns out that pretty has a price, a price that she wasn’t ready to pay just yet.