CREATURE

・chapter 25・

Asya dropped her bag in the entryway of her apartment with a hollow thud. She flicked on the kitchen lights and found her apartment just as she'd left it that morning. It was all still there, the bag of laundry she meant to take downstairs, the pointe shoes she planned to sew, the mail she'd left unopened.

She stayed standing in the entryway for a good few minutes, tempting herself to cry. Crying could only make it better, because god knows it couldn't get any worse.

The physio had discharged her about an hour earlier, after which Julian stayed behind at the theatre for the evening performance and Debbie went about doing some damage control. Julian promised to come by after the show to check on her, but until then she would be alone. Alone, left trying to figure out the mess her life had turned into since that morning.

With slightly trembling hands she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the plastic zip-lock bag that contained her newly-prescribed painkillers. She turned it over in her palm, watching the white tablets cascade from one side of the orange bottle to the other. For the discomfort, the physio had said. As if she hadn't been dancing three-act ballets on severely impinged hips for the past two and a half weeks.

Pathetic.

She flung the zip-lock bag onto the kitchen counter, shrugged off her coat and left it on the dining table before she trudged into her bathroom. She hastily tore off her sweat-damp clothes and dumped them in the laundry basket, suddenly repulsed by the sight of her class attire. The clothes she'd worn that morning, when everything was still going according to plan, and now wouldn't be wearing for the foreseeable future. 

She caught a brief glimpse of her bare body in the mirror, unable to ignore the tell-tale evidence that she'd been taking it too far. The withering muscle in her legs, too stark dents in her stomach, veiny forearms, and ribby slashes across her chest. It was bad.

Shaking her head dismissively she stepped into the steaming shower, hissing at the water's scorching temperature. She'd been so unbelievably stupid.

In all her years of toying with her food intake and her body's physical limits, she never dared play with something as dangerous as painkillers. She knew it was risky at the best of times, knew it almost always covered up some sort of bigger issue that if left untreated, ignored, could...

The past few weeks had blurred together into one long strain of dizzy spells, cold flushes, and hunger pangs, ups and downs, highs and lows, applause and silence, hunger and glory. And all that time, it was like she was waiting to fall, like she was tiptoeing on the edge of her limits, just waiting to...Go over.

The hot water burnt her skin, and she watched her arms go blotchy from the heat.

She was waiting to panic. Waiting for the anger to set in, the disbelief, the sadness, anything at all. For goodness sake, she couldn't dance, couldn't take class, couldn't perform. There would be no more Lilac Fairy. There would be no Nutcracker. There would be no Gamzatti.

And it would be six weeks before she could start so much as try to do any of the things she usually did on the daily. Six weeks before she'd feel a trace of normalcy, six weeks before she'd be Nastasia Radzevich again, six weeks before she could do what she did best.

She shut off the shower water abruptly, running her fingers through her soaked hair so it plastered against her temple and back. Cry, just fucking cry already.

None of the sacrifices, none of the hard work, none of the relentless pushing over the past few months, none of it, none of it mattered. It had all sent her here, to this bottomless, feelingless, endless pit she now found herself in.