The Plot Calls #22 : "Healthy Avoidance"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Misha Eves didn’t glutton for food. She gluttoned for health. Unexamined, uncriticized compulsive clean eating. You poisoned yourself. Misha didn't. Her autopilot health routine, breath work, and meditations were hollow displays of mechanical behavior. Escapes from poor decisions. Loneliness. Attachment. She could be healthy - walk her miles, do her yoga, pretend, pretend, and pretend, without anyone knowing. She stayed healthy to more easily push her real thoughts to the wayside. Alkaline water. Detox teas. Misha's endless pursuit of optimal, curated vitality were never about anything in particular. She fasted. She cleansed. Mindlessly.

She stacked supplements like trophies—bottles, powders, tinctures—each promising purity, longevity.

At first, it had meaning. But, meaning meant she was attached to it. She had to make it a reflex she wasn't attached to.

Until it wasn’t.

The need for substance and the truth of her mistakes never left. They only changed shapes. One more superfood. One more cleanse. One more perfect, photogenic plate of nutrient-dense restraint. But placating relationships with dogs were noticeable every time she walked into her foul smelling home. Her fear of responsibility through connection was blatant every time she glorified a new relationship, until her partner became a real person. A person with needs. Needs require consistency. Consistency requires effort. It was easier to be clean and healthy physically so she could justify emotional suppression masked as healthy, cool, detachment. Neurotic psychopathic anxious avoidance that basked in the glow of radiant skin.

The compulsive pursuit of health wasn’t enough.

Misha hated being a dog lady. She hated being a cat woman. She hated that she made terrible, awkward comedic relief during serious moments. Misha didn't know how to listen to herself, how could she do it for someone else? It was easier to disconnect and pretend she manifested a perfect facade. An autopilot life where she didn't have to think, feel, connect, or accept that she's responsible for how her actions make someone else feel. Accountability was worse than never eating a steak. At least she could vegan her way to comfortable self deceit.

It was never enough. As she aged, her compulsion filled her unkempt home with the stench of several dogs, a few cats, a few birds, and more, and more masks. At first, it was okay. She did yoga. She did pilates. She listened to binaural beats. She meditated. She jogged. She was clean. Misha didn't drink. She judged those unhealthy potheads who were emotionally irresponsible slaves to their lower vibrations.

Misha was better than that. Until now. Now, she got tired of the stench in her home. She got tired of the same kind of purposeless men with no self-respect. Hollow facades that hit the gym for hours because they had nothing else.

Then came the whisper.

Low. Voiceless. Curling from Misha's overrun backyard. Misha never opened the door to the backyard. Her dogs never went outside. She was too busy to walk them. They lived piled on top of each other. Forgotten about until she had time, like Misha's needs for genuine and authentic connection.

One night, pacing her kitchen with her seventh herbal tea of the day, Misha noticed the warped grass surrounding the glowing plot. A faint, unnatural shimmer pulsed beneath it.

She didn’t question it.

Then, she recognized the hunger she placated.

A glutton for health—maybe placation—Misha recognized the compulsive hunger beneath the soil.

It mirrored her own.

Misha walked outside through the overgrown grass. She gazed into the patch of black-violet soil. Shimmering. Breathing. In its center, a porcelain hand. Delicate. Beautiful. Expectant.

Without hesitation, Misha offered what she had—a handmade bottle of elderberry syrup in her cardigan's pocket. The one she sipped on because it gave her a familiar burn of poison she was too good to consume. Even though she drank wine and smoked cigarettes in secret.

The porcelain hand accepted. Sinking into the plot.

The next morning, she felt… incredible. Light. Empty. Pure. She didn't feel lonely. She didn't feel regret. She didn't miss anyone. The stench of her filthy home didn't bother so much. Misha was able to do pilates in her living room - next to overflowing litter boxes.

Then, the hunger - the yearning crept up again.

Misha was smart. Her mind was clear. She knew what to do.

Misha fed the soil more—her vitamins, her herbal blends, her pricey adaptogens, her entire arsenal of curated health.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

Her appetite withered. Her fridge emptied. Her reflection blurred. She felt nothing but hunger. Gnawing. Quiet. Ancient.

Her hollow pursuit of wellness? The gluttonous hunger for pure, unfeeling control? It stopped. Well, not really. It changed forms.

Misha started eating meat. She ate anything, but she felt the same. Empty. It was like she finally learned to meditate properly, except she was doing it all the time. It was like she was sleepwalking.

Eventually, Misha stopped eating entirely. Her limbs shrank. Her eyes dulled. Her skin stretched thin over brittle bones. Time blurred. Misha left all of her doors open, as if to allow her pets to choose. Her pets all escaped, telling her how they felt and who she was: a jailer who thought of herself as a caretaker—a savior to the animals, because she couldn’t tend to the animal called ‘I.’

Then, one morning, frail and sunken, Misha knelt beside the soil. Her final offering in hand—a tincture bottle. Elderberry, nettle, rosemary, mint, and some other amalgamation of things other people said were healthy.

Misha didn't notice the tall, pale figure stood beside her.

Like the figure, Misha was on the edges of the plot.

Neither waiting nor expecting. Idle.

Her home, cupboards that once overflowed, and mind now empty, Misha had nothing else to give beside the tincture in her hand. Misha pressed the bottle into the glowing, shimmering soil. As it sank, the world dimmed.

Then, Misha heard a soft, hollow voice. "The plot calls. Your offering wasn't enough. The One Beneath. It hungers."

"I have nothing more to give," Misha whispered.

"Nothing?" asked the idle figure standing beside her.

As if by instinct, Misha knelt by the plot. She tilted her head back, exposing her neck. Her eyes blank, hollow. Misha stared at the clouds rolling overhead. Her mind was the breeze. Misha took in her final moments.

The idle figure beside her whispered:

“The Plot Thickens.”

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