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Stages | Episode One
Category:
Women
Publisher: Gretel Park Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 80
Copyright: January 3, 2014
Price: FREE! (eBook)
If Sophie emerges from the shadows, will she lose everyone and everything?
Sophie Walker spends each night in darkness at the side of a stage, producing the alchemy of theatre. Her job is invisible to most people and so, it would seem, is her life. In an attempt to come out of the shadows, Sophie enters a body-building competition, sculpting her body into the best shape of her life.
In the post show glow of competing, Sophie’s life begins to unravel. Her plan to keep her body in perfect shape, comes undone when she finds herself binging on food and then taking laxatives, exercising and restricting to undo the damage. Away from her husband and friends, she hits her lowest point and is forced to face that it’s time to break up with food.
But the road to healing is not what she expects, and she has to confront issues in her marriage, her job, her friendships, and her identity as an independent woman. This is a tale about love, sexuality, success, feminine beauty and enlightenment.
Excerpt
The room, draped in black plastic, reminded Sophie of a scene from an episode of Dexter. But the shiny covering wasn’t there to protect the walls from blood and tissue, but from the orange smears of fake tan. Sophie shivered as Pip painted the last coat of brown on her body, feeling the cold liquid run in dribbles down the back of her thighs. In the florescent light of the dressing room, the tanning solution made her skin seem dirty, as though she had bathed in a muddy creek. The colour had caked around the outside edges of her nails and tinted her French manicure a pale yellow, making her fingers look like those of a pack-a-day smoker.
‘Turn around,’ said Pip, ‘I’ll fix your suit.’
Pip drew two lines of glue along the edges of Sophie’s backside and pressed the green lycra of Sophie’s bikini against the trail of sticky liquid.
‘Face me and let’s have a proper look at you,’ said Pip. She stood back and surveyed Sophie’s body. She bit her lip. ‘Have you got tape?’
‘In my bag,’ said Sophie.
‘Fold over the skin on your belly,’ said Pip, ‘I’ll tape it down.’
Sophie pinched together the papery thin skin on her belly, until it resembled a puckered appendix scar. Pip covered the seam of flesh with a line of brown Elastoplast and glued the front of Sophie’s bikini pants over the top. A mess of white stretch marks intersected across Sophie’s hips. Fake tan couldn’t completely cover everything.
Sophie looked around for a clock on the wall, but if there had been one, it was now covered by black plastic. The only thing visible was a wall of mirrors, currently obscured by a cluster of girls admiring their reflection. She tried to determine who else might be in the Master’s division, but the lack of fat on the other women’s faces made them all look older than their years.
‘How long do we have?’ she asked.
Pip looked at her watch. ‘About fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘It’s time to pump up.’ She handed Sophie two eight-kilo dumbbells. ‘Lots of reps.’
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