Flash Fiction

      Maddi was an only child living what seemed to be a happy life in an average home with her parents, but behind closed doors laid an awful secret. Her parents were always busy preparing for the new baby who was soon to arrive, which is why they hadn’t noticed how much weight maddi had lost in the past few months.

        It wasn’t until the day she collapsed during her soccer game after school that people finally took notice. She was immediately rushed to the hospital for what they thought was dehydration, Bill and Cathy soon found out there was more wrong with their little girl then they had realized. The doctors and nurses were appalled by the shape maddi’s body was in they figured she had been starving her body for months now. If she wouldn’t have come into the hospital that day they probably would have lost her.

        After staying until she was healthy she was released but was to always be under close watch. A few weeks later maddi’s new baby sister was flown in from Africa. Her parents were ecstatic, but maddi started to slip back into old habits.  As Cathy and bill were spending more time with the new baby, maddi wasn’t under constant supervision and she could sneak away to the bathroom and get rid of whatever she had previously eaten.

       One evening the phone rang maddi answered, it was the women from the adoption agency. Her voice was soft and timid almost at a whisper as she spoke into the phone.

    “I have terrible news, Sophia’s mother passed away early this morning..” What was said next made maddi’s skin crawl! “. . .it was due to malnutrition.”

           Right away maddi hung up the phone without saying a word and ran to give Sophia a huge hug. She couldn’t imagine living without her mother or father and she didn’t want Sophia to have to ever go through that again. Of course Sophia was too young to realise what had happened but it had a huge impact on maddi.
        After that day she called up a rehab center and checked in. She didn’t want to be selfish and die because she didn’t want to eat when people all around the world would give their life to have the food that is available to her. All she wanted was to be thinner, but in the end thinner almost stole her life.



Reflection:
This story brefly shows two sides of hunger. The first side is starving yourself which is done by the main charecter who refuses to eat so she can be thinner. The second side is people who are starving but not by choice, this is done by the mother of sophia who lives in africa and eventually dies of hunger/malnutrition.