mal du pays
location; brighton beach pier time; present time characters; @bashianofonte & faye manaying
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. The days creep slowly along until the end of time.
The wind brought the scent of the salt in the water to her. It mixed in with the sunscreen from all of the visitors playing by the shoreline. From where she sat, she could parse out their laughter from the pier music and other performances. She would’ve visited this spot sooner had she known about it. It stirred a type of nostalgia in her that she couldn’t place.
The sun’s light bleeds across the sky. Two years passed and she still checked her hands for any blistering despite the artifact her sponsor gave her. The feeling lived under her skin, a nasty parasite that stayed burrowed and thrived off her blood. There weren’t many differences between her and the punishment. Although the phantom burn wasn’t quite the same as it usually felt. The sensation crept up all the way into her mind, like a frequency so high that it simply just buzzes.
All she could focus on was how it wasn’t painful—no, this did not hurt. It didn’t feel menacing, no. ( But she felt scared. ) She encountered traces of something like this prior, but she always called it the “Culture Shock” of moving to a new location. This was the loudest its presence had been and it made her longing for home almost tangible. It wasn’t long before she could sense that she wasn’t alone at the edge of this pier.