Maintenance Phase

by A.D. Ellicott

Mary woke in an unfamiliar bed, gasping for breath.

She recalled the shots, the dancing, the giggling stumble into a stranger’s apartment while they pulled off each other’s dresses. Her internal organs felt cramped up together, as though they were rats fighting for scarce space in the sewers. Her plan was to sneak home later in the night and return to her own form, but instead she’d slept shifted. She groaned and smacked her hand over her eyes.

“She wakes!” someone yelled from outside the open bedroom door. Her bedmate from last night walked in, red hair in a messy bun and spatula held aloft. “Want pancakes?”

How long had it been since she had pancakes? Real pancakes, not the almond meal monstrosities her mother made.

“Yeah, I’d love some,” she croaked. “Just let me, umm, freshen up.”

“Sure thing, buttercup,” said the other woman, and left humming in the direction of the kitchen.

Mary grabbed her discarded dress off the floor, slipped into the bathroom, and made sure to lock it behind her. Then she let go of the self-image she’d been clinging to all night.

She felt a surge of relief as she relinquished the crushing grip her mind held over her body. She looked in the mirror. Gone were the smooth curves of last night, the defined chin, and the dip of shadow at her collar bones. Instead of flowing, her curves rolled, overcame her. She felt skin press against skin where her neck met her chin, and felt the urge to pull her hair forward to cover newly-rounded cheeks.

The form in the mirror wouldn’t fit into her little red dress. It didn’t fit into any of the clothes she owned.

She took her first deep breath of the morning — her only deep breath until she made it home — and then set about chiselling her facade back in place.

Out in the kitchen, sunlight streamed onto a bench covered in flour while the woman mixed something in a large bowl. What was her name again? Kate? She looked up at Mary’s entrance and smiled.

“Pancakes are warming in the oven. Help yourself. Toppings on the table.”

Mary grabbed a fork and plate from the table, then pulled open the oven. Inside was a stack at least six high. She pulled two onto her plate. At the table, she drizzled maple syrup sparingly, added a spoonful of strawberries and bananas, and ignored the chocolate spread and cream.

Kate washed the flour off her hands and came to sit with her at the table, hands curled around a coffee mug. “They were all for you, don’t worry. I already had mine.”

“It’s okay, I’m not that hungry,” she lied. She was starving, but trying to cram down anything else right now would make her sick.

Her doctor was worried about vitamin deficiencies and kept telling her to add things to her diet: more greens, red meat, fruit. But she couldn’t figure out how to fit it all in without making herself vomit or making herself bigger.

She made it through half the serve she dished out for herself before setting her knife and fork down lengthways on the plate — the way she’d been taught to politely indicate that she was done, even though food remained.

“Um, thank you for that. And last night. But I should . . .”

“Of course!” said Kate. “Here, let me show you out.”

Once Mary was out in the hallway, Kate leaned against the frame.

“I’d like to see you again sometime, if that sounds good to you,” she asked.

Her smile was bright and cheery, and she had a smudge of chocolate batter on her cheek. But Kate couldn’t see her again because she hadn’t seen her — not really — in their entire evening together. Mary had no desire to repeat that experience, but she also didn’t want this moment to become any more awkward.

“Um, yeah. Sure. What’s your number?”

Mary dutifully entered it into her contacts, even though she doubted they’d ever cross paths again.

Mary toed off her heels as she eased through the front door. The hallway ran past the living room and kitchen, but if she timed it right . . .

“Hey, good lookin’!” She cringed, knowing the next five minutes would be mortifying.

“Hey, Mum.”

Her mother and sister were sitting at the kitchen bench over the remains of breakfast.

“Well, well, well, looks like someone had a busy night,” her mum continued, and her sister snickered.

“Um, yup, just stayed over at Carrie’s.”

“Sure. Well, it looks like you worked up an appetite. And it’s Sunday morning. Want me to make you some pancakes?”

Mary thought about the stack of pancakes half-eaten on a bright kitchen table. “I already ate. But thanks.”

Just as she was making her way up the stairs, she heard her sister gripe at her mother. “Why didn’t you make me pancakes?”

“We’ve discussed this. You need some moderation. Try to follow your sister’s example.”

“She could just be shifting, you know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to shift all the time. She just eats well.”

“She told me once it was a good way to keep control of my appetite. Just until my body settled into needing less.”

Mary let the conversation drift away as she climbed the stairs. When she reached her room, she locked the door and let herself go.

When Mary needed a break from herself, she’d go over to Gabby’s and lounge about in borrowed clothes. They’d pig out on pizza — though Gabby still managed to eat most of the slices — and watch re-runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Gabby understood what it was like to wear a body that was ill-fitting. Mary had confided what she was — that shapeshifters existed — during Gabby’s transition. It had seemed too cruel an irony to stay silent. But now Gabby’s outside reflected her inside, all soft cheeks and flower tattoos, and the understanding never wavered.

This time, as Mary arrived, Gabby grabbed her wrist and dragged her towards the bedroom. “I have an idea!”

“Hello to you too!” Mary laughed at her friend’s exuberance.

Said friend dragged her down the hallway and, once in her bedroom, threw some clothes in her face. “Here, slip into something more comfortable.”

None of this behaviour was unusual, but the clothes Gabby threw at her were. Instead of comfy sweat pants and a t-shirt, her usual attire for one of their TV-binges, she’d had one of Gabby’s floral dresses flung at her.

“What’s this?”

“A dress.” Gabby gave a cheeky wink.

“Yes, but why?”

“Well, I got a gift voucher to a baking class for two, and I just realised it expires today! So, I figured we could go together.”

Mary sighed. “I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. The whole point of today is to let loose a little. Now we can do it with baked goods.”

“OK, but why do I have to get changed then? I can just go as is.” She gestured at her sweater and jeans. Perfectly fine for a baking class.

“Yeah, but we’re going to eat what everyone makes. If you go like that, you’ll have like one cookie, and you’ll be full. If you shift, you can have like, two,” Gabby teased. “And you can’t just take everything home. You know baked goods are best fresh from the oven.”

Mary’s stomach rumbled. She’d skipped lunch in preparation for pizza.

“Shoo then, while I get changed.”

Gabby clapped her hands in glee.

The dress was slightly loose but fit well enough with a belt around the waist. It was a brightly coloured, 1950s-style thing with a little faux apron on the front. It swished as she walked.

At work she was smothered in toxic masculinity despite more than half the firm being women, so her figure drew inspiration from an ironing board. When she went clubbing with friends like Carrie — who loved nothing more than a slinky dress on a Friday night — she designed the kind of curves that drew gazes. But in this dress, she flounced.

Mary felt like skipping as she walked with Gabby to the workshop. She hadn’t gone out unshifted since Year 10. It made her entirely anonymous.

Her good mood lasted right up to the doorway of the bakery’s kitchen. Standing behind the demonstration counter was Kate, red curls escaping a braid and flour in one of her eyebrows.

“Crap!” she said, freezing halfway through the doorway.

Gabby stumbled into her back. “What?”

Mary collected herself. Entirely anonymous, remember? She wouldn’t be recognised, and she needed to act like a stranger.

“I just . . . well I had a one night stand with the instructor a few weeks ago. And then I didn’t exactly call her or anything.”

“Awwwkward,” Gabby said. “Wait, would she even recognise you?”

“No but . . . well I know. And now I need to pretend that I don’t know her.”

Gabby gave her a firm push on the back. “Perfect opportunity for a second chance. Get going, then.”

“That’s not —” Mary started, but then Gabby somehow herded her to the very front of the classroom. Mary took a deep breath, hoping to ease the tumble of complex emotions building in her chest, before getting started.

Part way through, Mary needed help rolling out the pastry for her egg tarts. Her stomach flipped and her throat went dry when Kate stood close to demonstrate the proper technique. When they’d met at the club, Mary had taken a few inches off her height. Now, they were the same height and Mary’s eyes kept unintentionally locking with Kate’s.

She looked over to Gabby for help and saw her grinning like an idiot. Gabby gave her two thumbs up. Great.

When the class finished making their myriad baked goods, they packed half into cute little take-home boxes branded “Kate’s cookies”. The other half went into the centre of the room on platters.

This was the part of the evening Mary had been looking forward to. All that bad food. Given the meals she’d skipped in preparation for an evening of indulgence, she was starving. But eating in a group — especially looking like this — turned her stomach a little. It brought to mind the schoolyard teasing whenever she ate a salad, or that time a teacher pressed a copy of Her Fitness magazine into her eleven-year-old hands at recess.

After a look to make sure no one was watching, she popped one of the tarts in her mouth whole, tasting a brief flash of custardy goodness as she swallowed. She took greater care when trying Gabby’s brownie, savouring the first bite, then telling her friend how much she enjoyed the melting chocolate chunks. She considered leaving half of it on the plate, to show that she wasn’t overdoing it, but decided that would be rude after the hard work her friend put in.

Just those two would have been enough to satisfy her. When shifted, she could barely stomach her coffee and soup, let alone a pastry. But today she was determined to enjoy every bite.

Next she tried a cinnamon scroll. A little dense, but still delicious. She sucked cinnamon sugar off her finger before catching Kate’s eye across the room. Her cheeks warmed and she cleaned the rest of her fingers with a napkin.

After those three treats, she was bursting. But she wouldn’t be able to take any of it home. She’d have to leave most of the deliciousness with Gabby.

She wanted to try the macaroons that Kate had made. They looked so light — just one wouldn’t hurt. She picked a gold-coloured one, expecting it to be caramel flavoured. Instead, maple coated her tongue. She remembered the pancakes of a few weeks ago, and for a moment she was wistful for that morning.

With a last longing look at the rest of the table, she packed up her things and waited by the door for Gabby to finish chatting up one of the guys. As she leaned against the door frame, she regretted her gluttony. The treats she’d consumed felt like a solid mass in her abdomen, like she had a cancerous tumour, not a full stomach.

She felt something thick surge up the back of her throat, swallowing it down with a shudder as she rushed to the bathroom. Slamming open the bathroom door, she fumbled with the lock until she heard a click, and vomited into the toilet.

She breathed out in relief. It was out of her. No more pain in her stomach, just uncomfortable fullness. The smell from the toilet bowl reached her and she vomited again. It happened twice more before, with a final dry retch, she pushed herself away from the toilet.

Flushing the toilet, she stumbled over to the sink. She washed her hands, then cupped some water in her palms and rinsed out her mouth, splashing her face to wash away the tears that had leaked from the corners of her eyes. Thank fuck she wasn’t wearing mascara today. She looked enough like a wreck already.

She gave her appearance a last appraising look in the mirror, recoiling at her splotchy red face, then stepped out into the hallway.

Kate was standing outside. Had she heard anything? The last thing Mary wanted was another person trying to pressure her into calling the Butterfly Foundation.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Mary said.

“No worries. It was nice to see you again.”

Mary nodded absently, waiting for Kate to enter the bathroom so she assess how much noise made it through the door. Mary heard the squeak of Kate’s shoes on the tile and the plastic snap of toilet lid falling against the cistern when it was opened. She could hear everything.

She was never coming back within a mile of this place. She turned to go then froze, her brain registering Kate’s words.

It was nice to see you again.

Mary gnawed her lip as she pushed through the door to Kate’s Cookies. After a week of fretting, she needed to know what Kate had meant by “It was nice to see you again”. So she came in on her lunch break, looking nothing like the curvy figure Kate met at the club that first time, or that form dressed up in borrowed clothes from the baking class.

Kate stood behind the counter, serving a customer. Mary joined the end of the line. With each customer served, she had to fight the desire to run off. Then she found herself at the counter.

A familiar ache started up behind her left eye, one of the warnings she was pushing herself too far. She looked down at the menu. What was the smallest item?

“I’ll have a peppermint tea and a . . . whatever cookie you recommend. Thank you.”

“Of course.” Kate smiled. It seemed friendly, more than what you’d offer any random customer. But maybe Kate was generous with her smiles. Or maybe Kate recognised her, even when Mary was in the ultra-slim form she wore to work. Mary needed to figure out which it was.

“If you have a minute, would we be able to . . . No sorry, you’re busy. I’ve got your mobile. I’ll message to arrange a better time.”

And there it was. Mary the law clerk didn’t know Kate’s number — that was Mary the one night stand.

“Sure, I’ve got a minute,” said Kate.

For all she’d suspected, Mary was reeling with those words. Not “Who are you and how do you have my number?” Kate saw right through her.

Kate took off her apron, put Mary’s cookie, a doughnut, and two pots of tea on a tray, and circled around to the end of the counter. She nodded towards a secluded seat at the back.

When they sat down Mary poured out her tea and took a sip. It didn’t sit well in her stomach. She ignored the cookie.

“Sorry to bother you . . .” she started.

“No bother. It’s nice to see you again.”

There it was again. “About that. I wanted to know how you recognised me. I mean, both times. And now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wait, you don’t even know why I’m surprised you recognise me?”

Kate shook her head in confusion.

Mary paused, dumbfounded. Kate didn’t just recognise her in multiple forms. She didn’t seem to realise that the Mary she met at the club, the Mary she taught at the baking class, and the Mary sitting across from her now would, to anyone else, have appeared to be three different people. She wondered what Kate saw when she looked at her.

Mary remembered the sunlit kitchen and the fond smile, and wondered what it would be like to finish her pancakes. But then she remembered the stories shapeshifting children told late at night around the campfire while the parents indulged in drunkenly animated games of charades.

“Yeah my cousin’s babysitter’s best friend? Her normie boyfriend had the Sight or something. The whole family went missing, and the other ‘shifters had to hightail it out of town.”

Mary had always dismissed those stories as urban legends. Most modern shapeshifters didn’t do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by a teenager with a contour palette. And even if they did, who would believe the person that dared to speak up?

But now Mary was faced with the oncoming implosion of the separate lives she had carved out of her body. It would be best if she left now before those facades crumbled.

“Well, no worries. I’ll just be going then.” She stood up, and the world spun a little.

“You haven’t eaten your cookie.” Kate sounded concerned.

“It’s okay, I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask that, but you don’t look so good. Why don’t you just sit down?”

“No, I’m fine.” She sat down anyway. The world didn’t stop spinning.

She looked at the cookie she didn’t eat and tea she didn’t drink, while her head pounded. She wanted to close her eyes to stop the bright cafe lighting lancing her brain.

“Are you OK?” Kate sounded worried. Just how bad did she look?

“I don’t. I think I might be . . .”

“Is there anyone I can call?”

“Gabby. Call Gabby. She was the one with me the other night.”

“Right, I’ll get her number from the registration form.” She paused and looked Mary over again. “Why don’t you wait in the staff room. It’s a bit quieter.”

Mary was imagining how awful it would feel to lurch from her spot, then be unable to hold down her food. But she hadn’t really eaten anything she could vomit back up, and she wanted to be somewhere she could just close her eyes for a few moments. She nodded, forcing herself up from the padded bench.

Kate guided her to the staff room with a gentle hand on her elbow. Mary sat down in the dark on a hard plastic chair, head pounding and stomach staging a revolt. If she made herself as small and still as possible, maybe the pain would stop.

“You stay here, I’ll be back in a moment.”

Eventually, Kate returned, phone in hand. “I’ll put her on now. Maybe she can explain it.”

She handed over the phone and left the room.

“Hey Mary, I’m here.” Gabby’s voice was low and reassuring, and still it split Mary’s head like an axe through a log. “I’m driving back from the wedding so I won’t be there for a few hours.”

Mary had been holding back tears by blinking them into her eyelashes, but now there were too many. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she whispered, tasting salt as she spoke. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Don’t worry about it, hun. Look, I’m sure whatever it is will improve if you just shift back, OK? You know being shifted makes you feel crap, so let’s take care of that first.”

“I can’t. I don’t have any clothes.”

“We can figure that out in a minute. Just shift back for me.” She was doing her best to sound soothing but Mary could hear the undertones of worry.

Mary twisted her arm halfway up her back towards her zipper but couldn’t find the energy to reach all the way. Her arm flopped back down. She tried again and felt a stabbing pain under her ribs.

“I can’t.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t reach my zipper. Every time I try to twist back I —”

“It’s OK. Is Kate there? We might need to ask for some help.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You can. She seemed really nice. You don’t even have to explain anything to her. Just say you need some help with this.”

Mary hesitated. Asking for help would be awkward and embarrassing. It wasn’t about Kate removing her clothes, they’d done that before. It was the inappropriateness of the situation, and that she needed someone’s help to do something so simple.

“Would it help if you put me on speaker?”

“Yes,” said Mary.

“You should still be the one to ask,” said Gabby, voice now crackling on handsfree.

Mary stood for a moment longer in the dark. Then she walked up to the door and knocked to get Kate’s attention. The door swung lightly on its hinges. It had been ajar, not closed.

Kate smiled. “Sorry, I wanted to make sure you didn’t faint while you were on your own. I couldn’t hear anything you were saying.”

“Umm . . . could you . . . This is weird but I need your help unzipping my dress. Do you mind?” She brushed away more tears with the back of her hand.

“Sure. I can help you.” Kate guided Mary back into the room and closed the door behind her. Mary turned around and Kate zipped down her dress, then pushed it down until the shoulders were in easy reach for Mary. Mary took the phone off speaker and put it back to her ear.

“Now shift back,” said Gabby. Mary’s eyes darted to Kate. If she shifted now, she knew she wouldn’t be able to shift back. And her clothes wouldn’t fit any more. Kate might not notice the change, but she would notice her trying to leave naked — as would the rest of the restaurant.

In the end, she still had a choice. She could laugh this off, put her clothes back on, stumble home, and hope some rest would fix this in a way that it hadn’t all the times before. Or she could take the risk of revealing herself, and let Kate help her.

In that dark room, Mary struggled to recall what she needed to change. Normally she held so tightly to the image she was shifted into that a moment’s relaxation allowed her to release her shifted form. But this time she was being watched. The primal instinct of a shifter was to not reveal herself in front of another. It made her too vulnerable.

“Could you, um, turn around, please?” she asked Kate.

“Yeah, sure.”

It wasn’t much, but it was enough that she could pretend no one would see her. Mary pushed the dress down and off, then clutched it to the front of her chest so it hid everything from view.

As it always did, shifting back into herself reduced her pain. The ache of her muscles, the pounding in her head all dimmed. But her stomach couldn’t take the sensation of all her organs shifting. She bent over and retched. A few drops of spit hit the floor.

Kate spun around to check on her. The scrap of dress she held to her front didn’t cover much any more.

“I think you might be dehydrated. Here, I’ll get some water.” She filled a glass from the little kitchenette in the corner. “Can you take a sip of this?”

Mary swallowed a mouthful. A moment later when it hit her stomach, she found herself heaving yet again.

“Right, I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Wait. I’m sorry, this is going to seem silly, but I can’t go in the clothes I was wearing. Could you . . . could you get me something from Target down the street? I’ll pay you back.”

Mary risked a glance at Kate, expecting pity or doubt. All she saw was confusion. “It’s not silly. Will you be okay for fifteen minutes? Keep Gabby on the line?”

Mary nodded, then tried to ignore the dizziness that came with the motion.

“What size?”

Mary didn’t know. The few larger items of clothing she kept at home had widely different sizes depending on which store they were from; she’d only found what fit by actually trying them on. “Largest they have.”

Kate was back ten minutes later, flushed and out of breath. She pressed a plastic bag into Mary’s hand. Inside was a maxi dress and a sweater that turned out to be slightly too large.

“Are you feeling any better?” asked Kate.

Mary considered lying to get her to leave her alone, but in the end she shook her head.

“Alright, let’s get you checked out.”

After the first hour they spent waiting in the emergency room, Mary turned to Kate. “You don’t need to hang around, you know. I’ll be fine.”

Kate shook her head. “No one who is in enough pain to be at an emergency room is fine on their own.”

Mary looked down at where her arms were clutched around her torso. “Thank you.”

They sat in silence for another hour as the pain in Mary’s stomach steadily grew worse. Kate regularly checked in at the desk to ask when the doctor would be seeing them. Finally, a trim woman in hospital scrubs came over.

“I’m Doctor Badeaux. I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling unwell. Can you tell me more about it?”

“I’ve got stomach pain. It’s sharp. Really bad. And also a headache. I haven’t been able to keep any water down.”

“When was the last time you had any liquid?”

“I had a bit of tea around lunchtime.”

“You had a sip,” interjected Kate.

“And before that?” asked Doctor Badeaux.

“I had some coffee yesterday.”

Doctor Badeaux frowned. “And what was the last thing you ate?”

“Uh, I had a muesli bar.”

“And when was that?”

Mary paused. “Yesterday.”

“So the pain started yesterday? That’s why you didn’t eat?”

“No the pain started today. I usually have a small appetite.”

“Having just a single muesli bar is a bit different from a small appetite. Are you sure you weren’t in pain yesterday?”

“Yes.”

The doctor looked at her clipboard and chewed her lip. “Look, I need you to be honest about what you ate yesterday. If all you ate was KFC, or if you had a binge on chocolate, I won’t judge you. I just need to know. This could be something as simple as indigestion.”

Mary looked up at the doctor in shock. Why didn’t she believe her? Then pain lanced through her stomach again, and she clutched her sides as she trembled. Her hand found soft curves instead of firm muscle. It reminded her she was fat. And now everyone could see it.

“I didn’t . . .” She was sore, and she was telling the truth, and she needed someone to find out what was wrong with her.

“It’s okay if —” the doctor started before Kate interrupted her.

“Look, she told you what she ate. She told you what her symptoms are. You should be diagnosing her, not gaslighting her.”

“I’m not —”

“You said you wouldn’t judge her if she had a binge eating disorder, despite very obviously judging her for her weight. You told her her memory couldn’t possibly match up to reality. Yeah, you were gaslighting her.”

The doctor clammed up for a moment before stepping back. “I’ll send a nurse over to set up some tests. Once we’ve dealt with the dehydration we’ll make a call on whether you need to be admitted or just monitored at home.” Then, stiff-backed, she walked back out onto the ER floor.

Mary’s shoulders sagged in relief, before tensing again as pain shot through her stomach. “Thank you.”

Kate looked her in the eye, something Mary realised the doctor hadn’t done once during the entire consultation. “People can be dicks sometimes. Doctors are notoriously fatphobic. You deserved better.”

Notoriously fatphobic. That answered the question of what Kate saw when she looked at Mary. She’d never been fooled. She’d climbed into bed that first night seeing exactly who she was.

“Still, thank you. I don’t think I could have said any of that to her.”

Dr Badeaux didn’t come back, but a kind nurse took her blood and hooked her up to a saline IV. They gave her something to settle her stomach and something for the pain. When she was able to keep down a glass of water, they sent her home with a referral on the condition someone was home to monitor her.

When Kate asked if she had anyone who could look after her at home, Mary said no. She couldn’t — wouldn’t — shift back just now, and didn’t want to face her family as a near-stranger, then deal with recriminations for the risks she had taken. She craved the ease in her own skin she felt when Kate looked at her.

Kate drove them both back to hers.

Mary lay in Kate’s bed in the maxi dress, legs tangling its length, and cheap elastic rubbing against her skin. It was the most comfortable she had felt in years. In the dark, she whispered to Kate what she was.

“What do you see, when you look at me,” she asked.

“Does it matter?” asked Kate. “I see you.”

And at last, Mary could breathe.

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Maintenance Phase” by A. D. Ellicott. If you enjoyed that, then you might want to check out her other works. Unfortunately, this seems to be her only published story so far. However, as I mentioned earlier, she does cohost a podcast about writing, called Going Prose, so if you’re into podcasts — and I’m kind of assuming you are, since you’re listening to one right now — you could check that one out, available on pretty much every podcast streaming service; there are many links to it at [https://]cztacks.com/podcast.
About this story, the author said, “This story was originally published in Body of Work, edited by C.Z. Tacks, which explores how we relate to our bodies through a speculative fiction lens. Immediately I knew I’d be writing about how I, and many fat people, have been applauded for sacrificing our health in the pursuit of making our bodies acceptable.”

Thank you, Addie, for the story and your thoughts.

You may be surprised to learn that fat people can have anorexia. It’s typically thought of as a disease that makes you all too thin, thinner and thinnest until there’s nothing left. But it’s possible to be both fat and starving to death. It’s called ‘atypical anorexia’ in the literature.
It’s not even uncommon: in 2021, an eating disorders service at Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne reported that “a good 40 percent of the referrals to that service would meet criteria for atypical anorexia nervosa”.

The symptoms are identical to those of typical anorexia (such as obsession with extreme dieting and exercise) with one exception: the person is not underweight according to standard criteria.
However, they are losing weight an an extremely unhealthy rate, making them medically unstable. But because they don’t look typically anorexic, they have much more trouble getting treatment — especially if they’re actually overweight — and studies have found that the atypically anorexic have “significantly higher levels of distress related to eating and body image” compared to typical anorexic, and that’s a high bar.

The other problem is that in order to regain their health and stabilize their vital signs, they actually need to regain some of the weight they’ve lost, which might make them overweight again, or more overweight, causing even more distress.

All that said, the redemption in this story is Kate. While Mary has spent her life hiding who she is behind a facade of slender, doing unimagined harm to herself in the process, because she knows — doesn’t just fear, doesn’t just have concerns, but knows — how people will react to her, Kate confounds all of that, by seeing Mary, as she is, rounded cheeks and all, and fully accepting her.
Kate can see the real Mary and so can be the perfect person for her right at the time she needs her. Would that we all could have someone we can trust to be with us behind our own facades.
I leave you with this thought from poet and author Kamand Kojouri: “I am looking for the one I can’t fool.”

Those of you who listen to us through to the end are used to hearing that PodCastle is part of the Escape Artists Foundation. Before I conclude this week, I have some exciting and important news to share about the future of Escape Artists.

The tl;dr version is that on October 1st, we’re going to be introducing brief, tasteful ads at the beginning and end of each of our episodes, though we’ll be keeping an ad-free feed available on our Patreon, and we will not interrupt stories with ad. Previously, ads weren’t something we considered feasible, but our recent audience survey showed 69% of respondents considered ads a “necessary evil,” while 30% didn’t mind them at all, especially if an ad-free option were available, showing your overwhelming support for funding episodes into the future.
For our incredible subscribers and supporters, we’re creating premium ad-free versions of our episodes, with bonus content you won’t find anywhere else. And here’s where it gets really exciting: if you subscribe at patreon.com/EAPodcasts before October 1st, you can lock in at our current base rate of $5 per month. After October 1st, new subscribers will pay $7 a month for premium access. That’s right, existing subscribers will NOT have to pay the new, higher rate.
Since 2005, Escape Artists podcasts have been committed to bringing you one story, told well, free of charge each week, and that commitment has earned us a vast worldwide audience — but also rising basic expenses. At the same time, we’re committed to compensating our skilled human artisans who take their time and talent to create these extraordinary stories for you. Both ads and subscriptions represent stable revenue streams that can help us continue to tell you tales for another twenty years.

So, whether you choose to enjoy our stories bookended with ads or join our premium community, we’re grateful that you are part of this journey. We couldn’t do what we do without your incredible support, so thank you for helping us bring free and accessible speculative audio fiction to listeners around the globe. Thank you for keeping our dragons fed.