Your Best Self, by Rachel Lastra

Carmen swings her legs, gently tapping her sock-clad heels against the examination table. The medical assistant told her to undress completely and put on the blue exam gown, but the room is chilly, so Carmen has left her socks on. A minor rebellion. The neckline of the gown gapes open, the velcro losing its grip after too many washings. Carmen keeps a hand up at one shoulder to hold it in place. 

A rap on the door, and the doctor pokes her head in. “Are you decent?”

This has always struck Carmen as an oddly existential question, but she nods anyway.

The woman who enters is tall and lissome in a way scrubs and a lab coat can’t disguise. Her face is so beautiful it makes Carmen sit up a little straighter. She has never seen this doctor before. Her usual doctor is on a ski vacation somewhere cold and expensive.

“Hi, Carmen. I’m Dr. Hendrix.” The doctor sits down in front of the computer and pulls up Carmen’s file. “What brings you in today?”

Carmen tells Dr. Hendrix about the alternating numbness and pain that radiate through the fingers of her right hand, no doubt brought on by long hours spent in front of the computer. Dr. Hendrix listens attentively, nodding at all the right moments, her shiny dark hair somehow catching the fluorescent light like crystal. She asks Carmen to rotate her hand in a circle and observes the range of motion, then taps along the nerves in Carmen’s wrist, trying to elicit pain. 

At Dr. Hendrix’s instruction, Carmen raises her arms to shoulder height and presses the backs of her hands together with her fingers pointing down. Carmen winces in discomfort through it all, and Dr. Hendrix makes a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. Stretches and a wrist brace are prescribed.

Carmen shifts on the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath her. Her knees poke out beneath the hem of the gown, and her gaze falls on her jeans rolled up on the chair in the corner. She has never been much for folding.

“And what about your weight?” Dr. Hendrix asks, and for a moment Carmen thinks she has misheard. She looks back toward the doctor, but the other woman is turned away, entering something into the computer.  

“My weight?” 

“Losing weight has so many health benefits, including easing carpal tunnel symptoms. We can develop a plan for you. I have just the thing.”

Dr. Hendrix reaches up to one of the clear plastic pamphlet displays mounted on the wall, plucks a pamphlet out, and hands it to Carmen. On its cover, a laughing woman holds an armful of leafy green vegetables to her chest, her head thrown back, neat white teeth on display. Slimteza: Be Your Best Self, it reads, in blocky blue letters.

“This just hit the market,” Dr. Hendrix continues. “I think you’d be a perfect candidate. It works best if you have at least 40 pounds to lose.”

If the floor opened up right now, Carmen would happily sink through it. She wants to get up, put her clothes on, and leave. Instead, she sits and listens, holding her gown closed over her chest, a chill snaking around her bare legs, as the beautiful doctor rattles on about statistics and side effects, costs and benefits. About the life Carmen could have if she wants it. About the magic of one little pill.

#

The sample bottle and pamphlet sit there on the bathroom countertop as Carmen performs her nighttime ablutions. She eyes them balefully as she dabs moisturizer onto her freckled cheeks, which somehow seem rounder than they did just this morning. Dr. Hendrix sent her home with a 3-month supply of Slimteza—god, what a ridiculous name. Take 1 pill by mouth 2 times daily. She should throw them in the trash.

She slides a strand of floss between her bottom incisors, pushes hard enough to draw blood. The ritual lacks its usual meditative pleasure. Her mind strays to her mother, all those fad diets she tried when Carmen was young: the one where she ate half a grapefruit with every meal and only consumed 1,000 calories a day; the one where she ate nothing but cabbage soup for a week; the other one, where she ate nothing but cottage cheese; the one where she consumed only meal replacement shakes for months. The shakes had taken the weight off, along with most of her mother’s hair, and left her tired and weak as a kitten. She wore a long blonde wig for the next year while the hair grew back. It was the thinnest she’d ever been and the most compliments she’d ever received. People had praised her hard work, her dedication, her restraint—they loved watching her disappear. Carmen asked her mother about it once, about how it had felt to go to such an extreme. “A shame about the hair,” her mother said. “But I never looked better.”

These days the fads have changed—Carmen is fairly sure her mother hasn’t touched a simple carbohydrate in the last 5 years—but the principle is the same. As is the message: your best self is a smaller one. Carmen has made her own forays into the thorny forest of weight loss. Juice cleanses, slimming teas, firming creams. Bunches and bunches of kale. By now she knows there is no such thing as a magic pill. Carmen promised herself a long time ago that she would not diminish herself to fit someone else’s ideal. But some days are harder than others.

She squeezes baking soda toothpaste onto the bristles of her toothbrush and attacks her teeth as if she can brush her self-loathing away. Be your best self, she thinks wryly, as she leans over and spits into the sink. She straightens up and looks at herself in the mirror, squares her shoulders, and spears her fingers underneath the red-gold curls at her nape, giving them a good fluff.

In the bedroom, Eli is sitting up in bed, scrolling on his phone. Carmen continually reminds him that the blue light is bad for sleep, but he never listens. Every once in a while he pauses his scrolling and she hears muted yelling: he likes to watch videos of people losing their shit in public.

“Do you think I need to lose weight?” she asks without preamble. She knows she is ambushing him, but she can’t exorcize this demon on her own.

Eli sets down the phone, his eyes widening until she can see white all around the brown irises.

“This isn’t a trap,” Carmen adds, a hand on her hip. “I want your honest opinion.” It is and she doesn’t, even if she temporarily believes otherwise.

“What happened?” Eli is intuitive and is no fool.

Carmen recaps the doctor visit, and Eli looks thoughtful. “No, I don’t think you need to lose weight.”

Carmen climbs into bed, and they turn out the lights, lying down side by side on their backs like railroad tracks. She is just drifting off to sleep when he asks softly, “Do you want to lose weight?”

She rolls away from him onto her side, so she is facing the open window, wide awake now. Through the parted curtains, she can see the moon, thin and curved, a sideways grin. Eli fits himself behind her, a big, warm spoon. “I love you,” he whispers and reaches his arm across her middle, resting his hand on the curve of her stomach. As surreptitiously as she can, Carmen sucks her stomach in, waiting in clenched, uncomfortable silence for him to fall asleep. When he does, she slips out of bed and into the bathroom.

She picks up the pill bottle, struggling with the childproof lid just long enough to feel ridiculous. When she has it open, she shakes a single pill out into her waiting palm. The small blue triangle appears gray in the moonlight. She rubs the pill’s rounded edges with the tip of her thumb, feels the pattern of the imprint code stamped in its center. 

Does she want to lose weight? A simple question with a complicated answer. She should be insulted by Dr. Hendrix’s presumption, and she is. She is insulted. 

But the thing is, if she’s honest with herself here in this lightless bathroom, she’s also interested. The pamphlet is still there on the countertop, and she can just make out the gleam of the woman’s teeth. Carmen has never laughed with abandon over fresh produce. What kind of life must that be? Before she can think about it too much, she clutches the pill in her thumb and forefinger and shoves it into her mouth, pushing it as far as she can toward the back of her throat. She puts her face right down into the sink and drinks from the running faucet, swallowing it down.

#

It has been six weeks since Carmen started taking the Slimteza, and she has already lost 26 pounds. She admires her figure in the bathroom mirror, running hands down stomach and hips, charting their new topography. She was skeptical at first, but the results are undeniable.

Her social value has increased exponentially. Just last week, Janice cornered Carmen in the break room at work to congratulate her and ask her secret. Janice had leaned in close, her breath warming Carmen’s ear, and whispered that she herself had gained 5 pounds and needed to get it under control. The syllables licked along Carmen’s neck, making her shiver, as Janice went on and on about how good Carmen looked and Carmen wondered idly what she’d looked like before.

So far, the side effects of the Slimteza have been mostly mild: headaches, a brief bout of gastrointestinal distress, strange dreams. Strange cravings. She found herself standing in front of the meat counter at the grocery store, saliva pooling in her mouth, though she has been a vegetarian since she was 17. She bought a rump steak and ate it raw while sitting in her car in the grocery store parking lot. When she finished, she licked the blood off the butcher paper. She has never been hungrier.

And then there is the one additional side effect that gives her pause.

Carmen leans in close to the mirror, turning her face this way and that. The woman in the mirror looks like Carmen, but it is not Carmen. She examines the reddish-brown eyelashes, tipped in gold, the fine hairs peeking out of the small, dark caverns of the nostrils. The mirror fogs up, and Carmen swipes a hand over it. The woman does the same. The woman has Carmen’s short, red-gold hair and the same scattering of freckles across forehead, nose, and cheeks. The same deep lines bracketing the mouth like parentheses. The same semi-permanent frown. Carmen blinks, and the woman in the mirror blinks, too, briefly hiding a pair of hazel eyes that tip up at the corners, just like Carmen’s. Carmen raises a hand to her cheek and drags it down. The woman in the mirror follows suit, distorting her face and pulling open her eye to reveal the pink, glistening flesh inside her lower lid.

Yes, the woman really does look like Carmen. But it is not Carmen. There is something different behind the woman’s eyes, something Carmen doesn’t recognize at all.

She washes her hands and dries them on a towel still damp from her earlier shower, then wipes her hands on her pants for good measure. Turning to leave the bathroom, she spares one last glance over her shoulder, into the eyes of the woman in the mirror. She feels a sucking pull, as though she’s raised a vacuum attachment to her face and is slowly vacuuming her own face off. The woman in the mirror winks, giving Carmen a sly smile full of sharp teeth. Carmen whips her gaze away and hurries out of the bathroom.

*

Night air cools the gems of sweat dotting Carmen’s skin. She feels Eli shiver beside her and pull the blanket up to his chest. Carmen leaves her body uncovered; she rode him like an animal and is still so hot, her body blazing. 

“You seem different,” Eli whispers into the dark.

Carmen remembers the way his fingers gripped her newly protruding hip bones, how his blown-out pupils made his eyes appear completely black as he stared up at her, the way the vein in his neck had pulsed as she licked it, the feeling of blood so close to the surface.

She turns to look at him, but his eyes are closed. “Is that good or bad?”

“Just different.” His voice fades with sleep. “Long as you’re happy.”

Happy. Carmen picks up the word like a stone, turns it over to examine the worms wriggling underneath. She pictures a laughing face. A wide, smiling mouth.

When she sleeps, her dreams are filled with teeth. Her fingers touch the mirror and the surface ripples, a glassy pool with no bottom. The woman grabs her wrist, pulling her inside.

*

At the breakfast table are pancakes Carmen doesn’t remember making. She stares at the neat stacks of golden brown disks, fragrant and steaming. Strawberry purée drips over their edges, pools around them like blood.

She sits down at the table and looks vaguely around the room. The kitchen is spotless, the dishwasher churning and humming. The magnet hasn’t been flipped yet: Sorry, we’re dirty.

“I have to meet that client at 9:30.” Eli strolls in, head bent, hair damp, ever-present phone in hand. He pours himself a coffee and sits down. “What’s the occasion?” he asks, registering the pancakes.

“Occasion?”

“I thought you were watching your carbs or something?”

Carmen hasn’t told him she’s been taking the pills. He assumes she has just been watching what she eats. She doesn’t correct him.

“Just for good luck,” she says, and smiles at him.

She is ravenous. She pounces on the pancakes, shoveling them in, barely taking time to breathe. When they are all gone, she licks the strawberry blood from her plate.

Eli looks at her strangely. 

She catches sight of herself in the glass door of the toaster oven. Her lips are smeared with red.

*

Janice stands in the entrance of Carmen’s cubicle, blocking escape, droning on about the budget. Is Carmen sure the numbers are right? Another surplus. They will need to find a way to spend it so they don’t get stuck with less grant money next year. Has Carmen checked with Scott to make sure everyone’s expenses have been turned in?

Carmen tries to listen, but she’s distracted. It’s after lunch, and she has just finished a salad at her desk. She spears the tip of her tongue into the grooves between her back teeth, feeling the small slivers of romaine lodged there, the gritty stump of a partially chewed walnut. According to her dentist, Carmen’s teeth are abnormally close together. Food has a tendency to stick between her molars. If she doesn’t floss after eating, she will worry the little bits with her tongue until she thinks she will go mad.

She opens the bottom drawer of her desk and pulls out her zippered bag of dental floss. Carmen has a thing for dental floss. She special orders it from a company online. It comes in bright little boxes, different flavors to match her moods: wintergreen or cinnamon for when she is feeling traditional, when she craves normalcy; orange blossom, coconut, or strawberry for when she is feeling frisky. Today feels like strawberry.

She stands up, gripping the little red box in her hand. Janice doesn’t move, and Carmen has to squeeze past, her breasts brushing against Janice’s silk-covered shoulder. Carmen heads toward the bathroom and Janice follows, chattering away.

Carmen opens the door and walks up to the mirror, placing the box of floss on the short ledge underneath it. She washes her hands with the pink foaming soap, breathing in its chemical scent. There is a hint of something else underneath, a warm, musky smell that Carmen knows belongs to Janice. Another side effect of the Slimteza—Carmen’s sense of smell is so much keener.

The dispenser is out of paper towels, but there is a stack of them on the ledge. She plucks one up and dries her hands, then picks up the box of floss and pulls out a long strand, severing it neatly on the tiny metal tab. She slips the strand between her teeth and does her best to give Janice a pointed look. What does a woman have to do to get a little privacy? Janice is oblivious. Janice is a former ballerina. She wears her brown hair long, almost to her waist, and her toes turn out naturally into third position when she stands. Her sage green blouse is buttoned right up to her chin. Just looking at it makes Carmen feel strangled.

As Carmen glides the floss from between her teeth, a little missile of food flies out, landing like a fly on the bathroom mirror. She wipes it off with a paper towel, looking into the mirror for the first time since entering the bathroom.

There are three reflections.

Carmen watches in the mirror as her double walks up behind Janice, who does not seem to notice, just keeps talking, talking, talking. The woman in the mirror slips her hands around Janice’s shoulders and unbuttons the top two buttons of Janice’s blouse, rubbing her nose in Janice’s hair. Carmen can smell her shampoo. The woman in the mirror parts the collar of Janice’s blouse, revealing the pale, tender flesh of her neck. Carmen blinks, and the woman in the mirror is now holding a length of floss wrapped several times around each hand. She pulls the floss-rope taut and brings it up to kiss Janice’s neck. The woman’s hands flex, and the rope digs in. Janice’s eyes widen, her hands coming up, but there is nothing she can do as the floss neatly severs her throat, blood fountaining down her neck and onto her blouse, staining the green silk red. The woman licks a trail of blood from Janice’s neck, and Carmen’s stomach growls.

The woman drags Janice’s body backward into an empty stall and places it on the toilet seat where it slumps to the side but is held up by the wall. The floor is slick with blood. As the door closes on the two of them, the woman bares her teeth and buries her face in Janice’s neck like a lover. Carmen’s own mouth floods with a rich, metallic taste.

She looks back at her own reflection. Her chest rises and falls as though she is out of breath, and there is blood splattered over the apples of her cheeks like an extra scattering of freckles. She can see her cheekbones. The soft contours of her face are disappearing. The Slimteza has really done wonders. A shame about Janice, but Carmen has never looked better. She runs her tongue along her teeth, pushes it up against the ridges of her soft palate. She opens her mouth up wide and raises the blood-soaked floss, eases it between her teeth.

Rachel Lastra is a writer and editor currently based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Chestnut Review, and MoonPark Review. She is a student in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.