Alyssa Duran- Week 4- Story 5

I Was Once a Teenage Girl

I am now a chocolate bar. I suppose I simply ate too many. This is not a problem you can fix either. I can’t just eat humans like I could eat chocolate bars and turn back. They don’t sell humans and I don’t have a mouth. So here I am a giant chocolate bar, lying in bed, melting into the covers. Soon, I’ll be gone. I’m glad my roommate left the air conditioner on. If she hadn’t, I’m sure I’d already be gone.
It started a few weeks ago in the beginning of September. I just moved into my new apartment across the street from my new college. It was quite an eventful day, running back and forth to the car like little ants. My two brothers had come to say goodbye and my mother cried as she made her way back to the car for the last time. She wanted to stay and meet my roommate. I’d never met her before. We just happened to be two girls who needed a place to live at the same time and couldn’t afford it on our own. Her name was Sara. We’d talked on the phone only once.
Sara came around three hours later than I did and I had helped her unload all of her stuff. She had couches with her and chairs stuffed in a little U-Haul that her dad had rented. I was exhausted by the end of the day and I had no desire to be active. I settled myself on the couch and flipped through the channels of my little TV. I didn’t know where Sara was, nor did I care, but she wanted to bond, so she came into the living room and settled herself in the chair next to me.
“What kind of TV you watch?”
“I don’t know. Whatever’s on, I guess.”
“I like movies. I’m a movie person. I’m hungry. I feel like a snack. Want something?”
Now, around this time, I’d never been a snack person. My mother and father had never been snack people either. We ate healthy meals, handmade lunches for school, salads and salmon for dinner, and an unusual amount of vegetables. We were what someone might consider an avid health-food family. My simple response to her tentative ritualistic bonding question was “A snack?”
“Sure. I bought some chocolate on the way up. You want some?” I didn’t have a chance to answer. She handed me a Hershey’s chocolate bar that included almonds and I watched as she unwrapped the brown and silver exterior with a loud crinkling noise. I decided why not try something new. I was in a new place with a new person in a new town, so a new attempt at chocolate couldn’t hurt.
I know what people would think if they heard I’d never had chocolate before, but like I previously mentioned my family is an avid health-food family. Snacks were a sin in the eyes of my parents, and when your parents feed you, you eat what they give. It’s not something I could control. Sure, Halloween wasn’t the greatest holiday. I suppose that’s what you get when you have a dentist for a dad.
I nibbled at the chocolate, unsure of what to expect, but I almost spit it out with shock at the marvelous melting sensation I felt in my mouth. It was then that I realized I had been missing more than I ever thought I could miss. Chocolate and I were made for each other.
I knew chocolate was not a truly healthy food group, but I told myself that it was alright to eat a little. A chocolate bar a day would not kill me, nor would it cause me to become obese or diabetic if I still watched my normal food intake and kept the rest of me healthy. I worked out in the afternoons because I was on the soccer team and so I felt that working out made it seem like I wasn’t even really eating chocolate.
With this excuse engraved in my head it was only natural for me to start buying two chocolate bars a day. Since it was like I wasn’t even eating one, two made it seem like it was only one and I became very content. I would eat one for lunch and then another for dinner. Eventually, I started eating them at breakfast too. I don’t’ know what came over me. I craved chocolate, I saw chocolate, I actually think I dreamt about it once at night. This was more than a strong desire, chocolate became my addiction.
As time passed, I noticed the size of my chocolate bars growing. Every time I went to the little quickie-mart to get a weekly ration my eyes were carried to the king-size Hershey’s bar and I’d leave with a laden bag of those instead of the regular ones. More than once I told myself I didn’t need bigger ones, but I could no longer control myself.
Sara knew I loved my chocolate. It’s hard to hide things from a roommate. For my birthday two days ago she bought a bulk package of chocolate bar and I almost killed her from the force of my hug. Chocolate was, after all, depleting quite a bit of my bank account. That day, I came to the conclusion that it was alright to eat chocolate, my new excuse was at least I wasn’t doing drugs.
I should have known that chocolate was my drug. I know that now, but who in the world am I going to tell that to? Don’t eat chocolate! Watch what you eat! No one can hear me. I’m a giant chocolate bar.
Last night around 2 A.M, I had a funny feeling as I slept that something strange was happening to me. I thought I still had chocolate on my fingers from earlier because they rubbed together with that now very familiar smooth, chocolate texture. I kept rubbing until the smooth, melted feeling turned into little round chocolate balls and I could chuck them off my fingers onto the floor. I went back to sleep.
Later, that feeling came back and I woke up because for some reason, it bothered me. This time, however, it was not just my fingers that felt slimy. It was my feet and my legs. They seemed as if they were melting together into one big chocolate mold. I thought someone had played a terrible joke on me and poured melted chocolate all over my body. I wanted to touch my legs, I wanted to lift the sheets and look down at my body, but I couldn’t. My arms seemed attached to my stomach and I couldn’t even feel my hands. I tried to pull my legs apart, but they would not budge. I tried to scream for Sara to help, but my mouth would not open.
In my panic I couldn’t think about what it was that had happened. Had I been kidnapped and bound? Was there tape on my mouth? But I was in my room, it was dark, no dark presence lurked in the corner. Where was Sara? Why couldn’t I move? Every question that I could ask myself ran through my head that night. I sat there in the dark until the sun rose and peered through my blinds. That was when I started melting.
I could feel myself soaking into the sheets. I knew I was shrinking into nothingness. There was a familiar air about this melting scenario. I was melting like chocolate had melted so many times onto my fingers.
As I lay here melting, I’ve had time to think. I’ve questioned why it is that I became a chocolate bar, but my answer was fairly obvious so I did not linger on this inquiry long. I thought about stranger things. Why was it I could still think? How could I recall all these fond chocolate memories that I now completely blame on Sara? Perhaps I had not changed as completely as I thought, perhaps only my physical form had changed and I still retained a human mentality. It’s funny to think that chocolate has a brain. I wonder if I could starve to death since I’m a giant candy bar. My stomach is food, so would it need food to sustain it? These seem to be such silly questions. I suppose I should contemplate life since it isn’t going to last much longer.