Trembling With Fear 1-7-24

Taking Up Space, by Mackensie Baker

There was never enough space for me.

The first thing I remember feeling was hunger. An emptiness I couldn’t conquer, though I did try. A growing girl, they would call me in my first home. They would say it with a laugh and, sometimes, a second helping. In the second, a similar sentiment—she’ll eat us out of house and home. Sometimes said with a chuckle, sometimes with a nasty look. Never a second helping though. They said I was getting fat.

I was. Tall, and fat. Getting bigger all the time. I started to steal food where I could, and I would hide it until I was alone. I wished that I could stop the hunger, that I could fill the aching black hole inside of me, but it was never enough. 

The foster mom in the third home I was sent to called me a changeling thing—I had to look this one up. It was an old word for something inhuman. Something not right.

At night, as my feet dangled off the edge of the mattress, I cried tears that could fill buckets. I banged my skull against the headboard as I curled my legs up against my stomach. It was the only way I could fit most of my body under the blanket.

The fourth home already had too many children, and I was expected to share a room with another. She called me a waste of space. She called me other names, too, and would pinch my fat. The other kids there made it into a kind of game. They would sneak up behind me and squeeze my sides, my arms, then run away again before I could turn around, giggling and making gagging sounds.

At fifteen, I could barely fit through doorways. They assured me I had done growing. I knew better. I weighed myself every day. I marked my height on the inside of the bathroom closet, where no one would see. I was still growing, and worse—I was growing faster.

They started noticing me then, and watched me closely. They complained to someone about me in the end, I suppose. Told them there was something wrong.

There was no fifth home. There was only the laboratory and my room in what they called a hospital. I never saw any other patients. I dreamed of being like Alice, of finding an elixir that said ‘drink me.’ I dreamed of shrinking, getting smaller and smaller until the hunger was gone and everybody loved me.

The doctors tested for everything but hardly spoke to me. As I grew, my skin thickened. The needles got larger, and there were more whispers and glances. They made special furniture for me. A bed I could stretch my legs out in. A chair wide enough to sit on without breaking. It was like a group of Barbie dolls making room for a Raggedy Anne in their Dreamhouse. If those Barbies wore lab coats and stuck Anne with needles as thick as their arms.

Soon enough, this room also became too small for me. They moved me to another facility on site. They had prepared it based on their predictions. That night, I had the experience of trying to sleep in a too-large bed for the first time in my life, the ceiling far above my head. By the end of the month, though, I had outgrown the bed, and could touch the roof without straining up onto my tiptoes.

Then came the reports. From all the homes I’d passed through. Nail clippings as big as boomerangs. Stray hairs as long and thick as ropes. Even the parts of me I had discarded kept growing bigger and bigger.

I was no longer simply an anomaly. I was a danger. I imagined a body big enough to cause earthquakes when I walked, floods when I bathed, flattening cars and houses and creatures beneath me.

The doctors and scientists must have had the same idea. They came to a conclusion. They could not kill me here, for fear that my body could not be broken down. Attempts to destroy the parts of me they had taken had failed.

And so, they made a shuttle. Though, I suppose, this is not quite the right word. They made me a coffin that could be sent off into space, set to continue in a trajectory that would lead me far from their planet. This, they said, would give them the most time, should their worst calculations prove true.

When informed what was to be done, I told them I wouldn’t let them kill me. If I was to be sent to my death, I would at least like to see the stars first. They ignored me and tried to pump me full of chemicals that were meant to kill me painlessly. It hurt, but did not kill me. And so my wish was granted.

The shuttle-coffin was cold, and there was not enough room, never enough room. But I saw the stars. I saw the dark, never-ending expanse that I was heading towards. Was it days before the shuttle-coffin became so cramped I could hardly move? Or hours?

I would not cry. I had no wish to drown in my own salt. I made a different decision, and opened the hatch at the bottom of my metal tomb. My body slid out into the perfect, cold silence. I stretched out my legs in the dark and waited to freeze or to suffocate, and was surprised when I did not.

It’s nice out here, I’ve realized. It’s quiet. Dark. The aching void outside of me matches the one inside. My thick skin keeps me from freezing, and my lungs grew, and changed in the growing. I no longer need to breathe. 

I am swimming through galaxies. Bathing in the Milky Way. I want to drink it all down.

Finally enough space for me, and then some. 

I will eat and become worlds. 

Worlds will become me.