Not that it matters.  All that working out and you still don’t seem to be losing enough weight.  You know this because every time you’re at the gym you hop onto the scale, hoping you somehow lost ten pounds in the twenty-four hours since you last weighed yourself.    Squatter girl fearlessly berates your failure, even though her very existence seems to depend on your saddlebags.  Your rational mind, awed to near silence since all of this started, urges you to be patient with yourself and remember how refreshing running can be when you’re not gasping for air. 

You try to talk to people about it, but no one can see that you look much different.  If anything, they say, you needed to gain some weight.    The old, wise you harrumphs in validation.  You try to explain the succubus without precisely telling people that a succubus squatter has invaded your mind.  You say, “I can’t seem to stop thinking about my weight.”  People respond compassionately but you don’t think they pick up on the pitch of desperation in your voice.  This is who you are now, a tabloid-reading, squatter-infested maniac who parades in front of her mirror wondering if her hips will be this big forever.

The one person who seems to understand is your ex boyfriend.  Which may explain how you end up taking off your clothes for him so he can see your hips.  “You look great,” he says.  “Your hips have grown, but you really look great.  Now, turn around.”  He assess your hips from the side, then from the back.  He’s certain they’ve grown.  You force him to tell you if they’re too big.  “They could be a little smaller,” he says.  “But it’s not like no one’s ever going to want to have sex with you again.”  Then you notice that glazed look he gets when he wants to have sex with you, and you both spend a few minutes feeling awkward.  Squatter girl, of course, thinks this is hilarious.  She’s invited some crass friends over for the spectacle, who smoke just to piss you off and make bets on whether or not you’ll sleep with your ex.  You’re sorry, but it’s nobody’s damn business who won. 

Through all this you still eat.  Not as much as you did when you first stopped smoking, but lately you’ve developed a strange … interest in food, especially in places that sell it.  In fact, you can’t remember a day since your succubus arrived when you haven’t visited a food store.  How much money are you spending?  How many times have you walked from your house at ten at night “just to go pick up some bread?”  You usually don’t even need anything.  You go because you like being there.  You like to walk up and down the aisles, thinking about the food, reciting the names of products in a meditative, reverent whisper, “pecan shortbread cookies, espresso chocolate chip cookies, honey stroopwaffle cookies.”  You obviously look batty, and you care enough to at least buy something before you leave.  

You’ve got to admit, though, you smell better.  You can breathe and your skin’s no longer ashen and gray.  Some mornings you wake up, and you feel fucking great.  But your mind’s still shot.  You can’t shake the feeling you traded an addiction for something about to cross the border into pathology.  You still have instincts, though, and when you listen to them they tell you that you’ve done something good for yourself.  Even in your possessed state you can’t imagine smoking again.