Читать онлайн «The Art of Starving»

Автор Сэм Дж. Миллер

DEDICATION

For Hyman P. Miller, who always knew this would happen,

even if he wouldn’t be here to hold it in his hands

PREFACE

Congratulations! You have acquired one human body. This was a poor decision, but it is probably too late for you to do anything about it. Life, alas, has an extremely strict return policy.

Not that I’m some kind of expert or anything, but as an almost-seventeen-year veteran of having a body, I’ve learned a few basic rules that might save you some of my misery. So I’m writing this Rulebook as a public service. Please note, however, that there are a lot of rules, and some of them are very difficult to follow, and some of them sound crazy, and please don’t come crying to me if something terrible happens when you can only follow half of them.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Rule #1

Rule #2

Rule #3

Rule #4

Rule #5

Rule #6

Rule #7

Rule #8

Rule #9

Rule #10

Rule #11

Rule #12

Rule #13

Rule #14

Rule #15

Rule #16

Rule #17

Rule #18

Rule #19

Rule #20

Rule #21

Rule #22

Rule #23

Rule #24

Rule #25

Rule #26

Rule #27

Rule #28

Rule #29

Rule #30

Rule #31

Rule #32

Rule #33

Rule #34

Rule #35

Rule #36

Rule #37

Rule #38

Rule #39

Rule #40

Rule #41

Rule #42

Rule #43

Rule #44

Rule #45

Rule #46

Rule #47

Rule #48

Rule #49

Rule #50

Rule #51

Rule #52

Rule #53

Acknowledgments

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About the Author

Books by Sam J. Miller

Credits

About the Publisher

RULE #1

Understand this: your body wants the worst for you. It is a complicated machine built up over billions of years, and it wants only two things—to stay alive and to make more of you. Your body thinks you’re still an animal in the jungle, and it wants you to eat ALL the food, and stick your DNA up in anything you can hold down. Lust and hunger will never leave you alone, because your body wants you grotesquely fat and covered in kids.

DAY: 1

TOTAL CALORIES: 3600

Suicidal ideation.

When you say it like that it sounds soft and harmless, like laissez-faire or any of the other weird sets of meaningless words they make you memorize in school. The letter from the psychiatrist sounded so calm I had to read it a couple of times before I saw what she was trying to say. She didn’t quote me. She didn’t tell my mom I said, Sometimes I think if I killed myself everyone would be a lot better off or Five times a week I decide to steal the gun my mom thinks I don’t know about and bring it to school and murder tons of people and then myself.

Instead, the psychiatrist said a lot of scary things in very tame and pleasant language:

Recommend urgent action—

Happy to prescribe—

Facilitate inpatient treatment—

Poor thing. How could she know my mom hides from the mail, with its bills and Notes of Shutdown and FINAL WARNINGS? I didn’t want to go see the psychiatrist in the first place, but the school set it up for me because I am evidently an At-Risk Youth. At risk of what, I wondered, and then thought, oh right, everything. At risk of enough that one or all my teachers filed whatever due-diligence report they’re obligated to file on someone who is obviously headed for homicide or suicide, so his or her blood isn’t on their hands. And as soon as the psychiatrist’s report came, addressed to my mom, I plucked it from the mail pile.