At the core of it, I guess we all just thought differently. Before Amelia grew up, we were able to sit down together and mock the nerves who ran around frantically thinking every paper cut was the end of the world. Now that we’re in charge of so many different systems and whatnot our little tiffs have become civil wars. Some of us think we should operate according to survival methods while others seem to think this is a good time to sit back and be complacent.
I was just doing my job when it all went to hell. Nothing personal. Hoarding fat because I worried about her. The kid despised me, turning this way and that in the mirror, pinching pockets of herself, nooks crevices crannies, all the things that made her look different, live longer.
These days she gave me a hell of a lot less to work with, foodwise.
Everyone blamed me, they said if I hadn’t overdid it in the first place, holding onto every half chewed cookie like we were going to starve then maybe she wouldn’t be underdoing it so bad now. And it had its effects on everyone. The blood was thinner, brain ran slower and I spent most of my time growling in hunger. No one likes the stomach these days. I’m like a punching bag for every inane thought in this operation.
Liver and I used to hang out. Now we fight.
“What do you want from me?” I yell. “I’m just the stomach! I’m working with what I get! You don’t like it, take it up with the brain!”
No one liked to take anything up with the brain. We had been told not to disturb her unless it was an emergency. But mostly because these days anything to do with food made the brain nervous, caused the blood to rush, and all the nerves to run around like idiots panicking even though nothing was happening. But Amelia wasn’t eating. At all.
It wasn’t always this way. She used to eat quite a bit. Goddamn it, the cell membranes of the fat cells would mutter. More late night eating. More digesting. They were sleeping. “We should get overtime for this,” they complained.
I travel down to see Rectum. These days he’s the only one I hang with. No one likes him either. No one’s ever liked him. “Yo!” I yell. “You get anything?”
“Nothing,” says Rectum mournfully. “Wanna play Spit?”
“Hang on,” I say. “Something’s happening.”
The blood is rushing upwards. The nerves are babbling anxiously as they float along the river of blood. I try to calm my people down but they’re twittering like butterflies, making everything worse. Morons.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” I roar finally. Secrets don’t last long inside the body. Like when the heart finally let us know that it was Amelia’s crush on some kid from her class that had all of us clocking in overtime. Or when the brain forget to send us the memo that we were taking acid and we all went into panic mode because she was having unusual symptoms. Or when Amelia got her period for the first time and the cramps were so painful we thought we were dying.
Before this year the most exciting thing that happened to all of us was when Amelia started having sex. It shut the brain up, it released some dopamine, it made us all relaxed.
Intestine looks at me. “Didn’t you hear?”
“No!”
We’re all very respectful of Amelia and her decisions, even the ones that hurt us. We don’t have a choice, really.
“The nerves are saying she took a buncha pills.”
“Why?”
“Take it up with the brain.”
“The brain doesn’t know shit,” panted the Heart.
“So why?”
“She was sad,” said the heart soberly, and we all shut up. There’s no arguing with feelings. We’ve overheard enough arguments between the heart and the head to know that. “Stop gaping and get your people in line,” the heart barks, but she doesn’t need to say it because I feel it, we all feel it, strange invaders descending because they don’t think we’re capable of managing on our own. An IV drip.
The heart is stuttering, making odd noises and the body is quiet for the first time in ages. The nerves are fading away, falling asleep in odd little corners, the IV fluids are spreading and I told the brain, told everyone she needed to eat, and nobody listened.
I stay up to listen to the sound of the heart monitor, to do a head count of my people, those clumpy hated fat cells, the rhythmic beeping letting me know that she- that we are still alive.
The heart can’t control the waterworks the way she used to. They’ve pumped me free of all those fat cells. I’m just a big bag of empty space. The Rectum is sympathetic because we know each other well. We go way back and we used to work together with the Digestive crew back in the day.
The worst part isn’t how soggy the body feels, how hard its become to keep track of a single thought, how I have to swim through an ocean of sedatives before I reach the brain.
“Where are all my people?” I demand.
“You didn’t feel them pumping you? You musta been really out,” the nerves tell me.
That’s the worst part. I go see the brain.
The brain is dethroned, playing second fiddle to the heart. “I had nothing to do with it,” the brain tells me. “I told her not to.”
I believe her.
“What now?”
The brain shrugs. “It’s out of our hands,” she says. “It’s between Amelia and her heart.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“You wanna be sedated some more?” threatens the brain. “They hear her stomach growling away, they’re going to make her choke some disgusting hospital food down-“
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper.
“What kind of life is this?” says the brain. “Maybe you’ll come back as a person.”
“Maybe you’ll be my anus,” I snap.
“I shouldn’t have blamed you for making her fat,” she said stiffly. “You were just doing your best.”
All those carefully metabolized, digested cells hoarded for future use- gone. All my own creations, my people- gone. In a snippier mood I might have schooled him on genetics and destiny and survival of the fittest but not today.
“It wasn’t good enough,” I say but we’re okay now, the Brain and I, just like when Amelia was a kid and we could both relish a slice of pizza together.
“If we wake up tomorrow, maybe I could come see you?” I ask. “Like old times?”
“I’d like that,” she says. “It gets pretty lonely up here. I mostly just run in circles.”
More sedatives are coming, I can tell the serotonin’s been slacking and the brain blames herself and I tried to keep Amelia healthy and save for emergencies but I had no idea it was so bad out there, outside of her body, in other bodies. People were waging wars on their stomachs, on their insides, demanding them to be flat but still healthy, able to deep throat without gagging, wear heels without stumbling, attack themselves without crumbling.
We slept patiently in position, thoughtlessly ruffling around, while the brain paced around upstairs trying to convince Amelia not to die. The brain was defending us, fighting for our survival. She had never stopped caring about me, about all of us. She had just gotten busy.
When we wake up the next day feeling queasy I wonder what Amelia is planning for us next. I deserve a vacation. We all do. Brain’s calling a meeting that the Heart is rumoring to be attending called What We Could Have Done Better. Attendance is mandatory. I don’t know that I could have done anything better. I was just doing my goddamn job.
Back to the grind.
–Art by Joanna Jankowska