Chapter 1: The Hunger Algorithm
Content Warning: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of body horror, extreme weight loss, and malnutrition. Discretion is advised, especially for individuals sensitive to topics related to eating disorders (ED).
Valeria lived to feed on the envy and pain of others. With an enviable beauty and curves in all the right places, she enjoyed the social standing that her rigorous diet afforded her. In cases where the pressure to care for her body was too much, Valeria allowed herself to release her stress on that girl of slight build who looked down until a tug of her hair made her obey.
One day, a notification arrived from an unknown number; it was a page from a well-known social network. For someone like Valeria, messages from strangers weren’t strange, but rather a recognition of her own presence. It was just out of curiosity; she wanted to know what those poor devils were begging her to see. Even if it was something indecent, it was inevitable for someone who marked her position as she did.
She opened the page only to find an image on that social network—an image I am sure you have seen before. The design was mediocre. A cheap italic typography over a gradient background that tried to look mystical but only managed to look stale. Seven doors aligned in a low-resolution JPG image that circulated through the feeds of thousands, accumulating “likes” from people who, in their boredom, were willing to sell their souls for a comment.
“Choose one,” whispered the glow of the screen in the darkness of the room. The rule was simple: comment the number of your desire and the door will open for you. No small print, no warnings. Only the vacuum of cyberspace waiting to be filled by human greed.
Valeria, with her long and manicured fingers—the same ones she used to point out others’ imperfections in the high school hallway—typed the number four. “To eat everything I want without ever getting fat.” Of course, she wasn’t gullible; she only thought of the possibility of leaving that rigorous diet behind and instead being able to eat everything her beautiful cherry-colored lips could devour; perhaps she would even do her favorite toy the favor of letting her breathe a little. In a society based so much on appearance, can you judge her for wanting to maintain her perfection without the emotional wear and tear? A smile of triumph illuminated her perfect face while the cursor blinked, like an eye watching her from the other side.
She didn’t know that, on the other side of the city, someone else watched that same comment with a different smile. A smile that didn’t seek beauty, but balance. And balance always demands that something be consumed until it disappears.
At first, Valeria felt like a goddess who had cheated fate. In the cafeteria, in front of the stunned gazes of those who previously envied her, she devoured double cheeseburgers and thick shakes. It was a spectacle of gluttony that only increased her magnetism. The girls looked at her as if she were committing a sacrilege and the boys admired her self-destructive behavior; but in the end, Valeria showed a triumphant exit and continued looking beautiful and neat as always, regardless of every food binge.
However, the “gift” was not a beauty filter, but an invisible parasite that had begun to recalibrate her existence. By the second week, the scale marked a drop that defied physics. She had lost five kilos despite having ingested what an athlete consumes in a month. Her skin, previously luminous, began to acquire a sallow hue, like old paper. It wasn’t an athletic thinness; it was as if her muscles were evaporating to leave space for a bony structure that began to claim its prominence beneath the dermis.
The hunger changed nature. It was no longer a stomach whim, but a cellular scream. Valeria ate until her jaw ached, but her body was an engine without a fuel tank: it burned the food before the nutrients could kiss her bloodstream. Imagine a fire that consumes wet wood: a lot of smoke, a lot of noise, but no heat.
The sponge, which before glided over smooth curves, now tripped over sharp edges. While passing the soap over her ribs, Valeria could count them one by one—not like one who counts gym trophies, but like one who counts the bars of a cage. The hot water stung her; she no longer had that layer of subcutaneous fat that protects from the world. The external cold seeped directly into her organs, settling in her chest like a block of ice that no banquet managed to melt.
Her cherry-colored lips, previously plump and appealing, began to crack, losing their color until they looked like two strips of dry leather stuck to a jaw that protruded too much. She no longer needed makeup to highlight her cheekbones; now the natural shadows of her face were so deep that her eyes seemed to float in dark sockets, like two castaways in a well. The glow of the screen, which once adored her, now revealed the truth: “perfection” had become a death mask of sallow skin.
The last time Valeria looked at herself in the mirror, she didn’t see the pretty girl who bullied others. She saw a scarecrow wrapped in silk. Her organs, exhausted from working for nothing, began to fail in a chain reaction. Her heart, a muscle now weakened and small, beat with an erratic rhythm, trying to pump blood that was basically water without sugar.
She died surrounded by fast-food wrappers, her mouth still stained with chocolate, in the most severe state of malnutrition recorded in the city’s clinical history. She was full, but her body had starved to death.
Valeria’s burial was a closed-casket affair; there was no amount of makeup in the world capable of returning humanity to that bundle of bones and dry skin that the police found among remains of cardboard and cold oil.
The next day, the school tried to recover its rhythm, although the ghost of Valeria’s lost perfection still floated in the hallways. Mireiya—the girl of slight build, the one who always walked with her eyes fixed on her own shoes to avoid the whip of Valeria’s tongue—stopped in front of the locker that was now empty. She felt a vibration in her pocket.
She pulled out the phone. There was no sender, only a notification that illuminated her tired face with a bluish and sterile light. A link. An image. Upon unlocking it, there they were again: the seven doors in low resolution, the stale design, the cheap italic typography that promised miracles in exchange for nothing. The screen showed the cursor blinking in the comments box, just below the last registered interaction.
[User deleted: 4. To eat everything I want without ever getting fat]
Mireiya observed the words for a second. Her fingers, small and marked by the stress of months of abuse, brushed the glass. She remembered Valeria’s smile, the way she made her feel small, invisible, defective. She remembered that balance always demands that something be consumed. A corner of her lips lifted in a gesture that no one would have recognized in her. It wasn’t joy; it was a cold and absolute satisfaction.
She turned off the screen with a dry click, leaving the device in the dark. She didn’t need to comment. She had already made her choice long before Valeria opened that link. She put the phone away, adjusted her backpack, and continued walking down the hall, this time with her head held high, while the echo of her steps resonated with a strength she had never had before.
