Turn 37 of 228
Check OnlyFans reactions to the office smell post and post weekend update from floor. Weigh myself Monday morning and see how much the weekend added. Also notice even hairier body and yellow teeth. Ask Diane about Henderson client response on way to work. Work improves further. I finish all tasks for the day by noon.
Monday morning light falls through the gap in the curtains and lands on Lena's body where it lies on the floor — 267 pounds plus a weekend of vodka and chips and piss and shit and the wish working quietly underneath all of it. She sits up and the floor peels from her back and the stiffness in her spine makes her exhale hard through her nose. The television is running its demo loop again. The console controller is still in her right hand. She sets it down and stands and her knees crack loud enough to echo off the kitchen wall and her belly hangs heavy and low, wider than it was Friday, the skin warm and soft and stretched in a way that feels less like stretching and more like arriving.
She walks to the bathroom and steps on the scale and the display flickers and settles: 271. Four pounds over the weekend. She looks down at her body and sees what she couldn't see from the floor — the stubble on her legs has become real hair, dark and coarse, catching the bathroom light. The growth under her arms is thick now, not stubble, not a shadow, but actual growth that spreads when she lifts her arms. The trail below her navel is denser, the line wider, disappearing beneath her belly. She lifts her lip in the mirror and her teeth are yellow — not stained-yellow, not coffee-yellow, but the deep yellow of nine days without brushing, of vodka and soda and sugar sitting on enamel and never being cleaned. Her tongue is coated. She smiles at herself in the mirror and the yellow teeth show and the stubble on her jaw shows and the grease on her skin shows and she doesn't look away.
She picks up her phone and opens OnlyFans. The office smell post has 267 likes and the subscriber count reads 104. Comments fill the screen: *the carpet post is the most unhinged thing I've ever masturbated to*, *you can probably smell her through the screen*, *this is performance art and I will not be taking questions*, *I would clean that carpet with my tongue*, *what does your office smell like when you walk in Monday morning?* She scrolls and a fifteen-dollar tip sits with the comment: *I work in an office and I will never look at carpet the same way.* She takes a photo from the floor — her belly rising, the mess visible around her, bags and bottles and stains and the controller — and types: *Weekend on the floor. 271 now. Never lost a game. Never cleaned anything. Monday tomorrow. The carpet missed me.* She posts it and the first like arrives before she stands.
She texts Diane on the way to work: *Did Henderson respond to the error catch?* She walks barefoot and naked through the Monday morning air, her body moving through it heavier and wider than it was Friday, the stubble on her legs visible to anyone passing, the hair under her arms catching the breeze. Her phone buzzes and Diane's reply is there: *Henderson sent a formal thank-you to the department. They referenced your explanation by name. The client lead asked if you were available for direct consultation. I told them you work email-only. They understood.* Lena reads it walking and something tightens in her chest — not the warm spreading feeling from Thursday night, something sharper, something that has teeth. She caught an error three analysts missed and the client knows her name. She walks through the lobby and the security guard glances up and glances down and she takes the elevator and unlocks her office and sits in the chair and the carpet stain is still dark beneath her and the office still smells like piss and food and her and the work is waiting.
She clears the queue by noon. Twelve reports, two briefs, one client revision that she rewrites from scratch because the original logic was flawed. She sends the last file to Diane's inbox at 11:47 and leans back and her belly presses against the desk and her thighs spread across the seat and the chair creaks. The work is sharper than last week — cleaner, faster, the haze somehow sharpening rather than dulling the part of her brain that reads data and finds the holes in it. She farts at ten and burps at eleven and eats chips from the bag on the windowsill and the crumbs fall on the carpet and she doesn't look at them. At noon she stands and the chair peels from her skin and she looks at the phone and the subscriber count reads 107 and climbing and the wish hums beneath her ribs — quiet, constant, patient — and she has the entire afternoon free and nothing to fill it with except herself.