Spain
Spain
Pain. It was just a minor injury. The smallest of pinpricks really.
So why did it hurt worse than hitting a pinky-toe on the corner of a solid oak dresser?
If the laceration had been bigger – a cut from a serrated kitchen knife would do – she would’ve felt justified to complain about the amount of discomfort she was experiencing in her hand.
It was weird, how she couldn’t focus on anything except the irritated nerves of her left index finger.
She couldn’t even clearly remember what had caused the sensation. Had it been the cactus spike that had accidentally lodged itself under her skin when she’d been pulling weeds from grandma’s garden?
She grumbled her way through lunch. Her responses more annoyed than warranted by the interactions at the table.
Breathing deeply, ignoring the other women in the house, she stared at the surrounding landscape.
It was as alien to her as walking onto the gallery of her apartment building, one or two floors below her own. Familiar, yet inducing a sense of disassociation.
Only once had she ever tried to open the door of the apartment below her own without noticing anything out of order. Usually, vertigo and dizziness pulled at her equilibrium after a few steps. The open gallery of the apartment caused a slightly different peripheral vision.
The scent of pines, the constant susurrus of the surf – more than a kilometer away, yet always present – infrequently broken by the thunder of a train rushing past on old tracks. She could see the cars and trucks pass on the pike. Sounds of life drifted up from the valley. A child’s delighted cry. A woman’s outburst of sexual pleasure. A man cursing over a broken down vehicle.
“Are you alright?”
She turned, looking into her mother’s faded-green eyes. “Hmm. Yes.” She looked at the irritated appendage, shaking it, in hopes of the pain fading.
The breeze over the balcony-terrace was unexpectedly bitter. Goosebumps rose up all over her skin, like hormonal pockmarks on a baby.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
But the pain stayed.
~