Turn 24 of 28

Eat the delivery food on the floor without moving. Get so turned on by the act you have an orgasm and pass out. Skip forward two months and show Lena and her apartment in an even worse state. Her belly is to her knees now with red hair everywhere on her body. Unwashed, disgusting, permanently drunk, Lena's favorite state.

The food arrives in six bags stacked against the front door. Lena hears the knock, grunts something that might be a thank you, and drags herself across the wet floor on her elbows, her belly sliding beneath her, leaving a dark smear across the tile. She pulls the bags inside one by one without standing, her arms straining, her body heaving with effort. She doesn't make it back to her original spot. She opens the first pizza box where she sits, halfway between the door and the couch, and eats with her fingers in the half-dark of the apartment.

The lasagna follows, eaten cold from the tray with a serving spoon she found in one of the bags. Then the fried chicken, grease running down her forearms and dripping onto the floor. She eats lying on her side, the food propped on the tile in front of her, her belly pressing outward against the wet floor. Wine from the bottle, whiskey from the bottle, garlic knots torn and soaked in gravy. The brownie sundae melts into a warm puddle of chocolate and cream and she laps at it with her fingers. Her body releases as she eats — a long fart vibrating against the floor, urine spreading fresh beneath her — and the combination of fullness and relief and the warmth building between her thighs pushes her over an edge she didn't know she was approaching. She comes with a mouthful of fried chicken, her enormous body shuddering on the wet tile, a low groan rolling out of her that dissolves into a belch, and then she is gone, her face pressed against the floor, chocolate on her chin, her belly rising and falling with each deep breath.

Two months pass.

The apartment is unrecognizable. The walls sweat with condensation from the sealed windows. The floor is a landscape of layered waste — dried and fresh, dark stains spreading in concentric rings from the couch to the kitchen to the bathroom door, each layer marking a day or a week of Lena's existence. Delivery boxes tower in unstable columns, some emptied, some still holding cold food growing fuzz. Wine bottles line the baseboards like a border of green and red glass. The couch has a permanent impression of her body pressed into its cushion, the fabric stained beyond recognition. The air is thick, sweet, sour, fermented — a living atmosphere that hits the back of the throat and stays.

Lena lies on the floor in the center of it all, naked, enormous, her belly spreading outward from her body like a landscape of its own. It hangs past her thighs now, past her knees when she stands, a vast soft weight that rests on the floor between her legs when she sits. Red hair covers her — legs, arms, underarms, the dark trail below her navel thickened and spreading, down her forearms, across her toes, a fine down across her lower back. Her hair, unwashed for months, hangs in matted ropes. Her skin carries the layered scent of everything she has eaten and released and slept in. A whiskey bottle lies empty beside her hand. The laptop glows a few feet away, propped against a tower of boxes, the dark web site open, notification counts climbing. She stirs, reaches for a cold pizza slice from a box she doesn't remember ordering, and takes a bite. Her eyes are half-closed, her face round and soft and slack with the permanent haze of wine and whiskey and food and satisfaction. This is her favorite state — drunk, full, filthy, growing, watched. The warmth pulses through her, steady as a heartbeat, and she smiles with sauce on her teeth.