The scar tissue of memories has faded but I remember the lines. Scattered flecks of white dust, the sound of plastic scraping against glass. Like stepping in fresh snow. Bitter ice slid down my throat, rooms swelled, and we smiled and chit-chatted, a hug here, a kiss there, and I’m so wet Daniel, let’s go outside.
At first, I wanted it too. My nights in Madrid had been fuelled by the drug. Cocaine opened up skies in dark clubs as music pounded in my chest. I shovelled a lack of inhibition up my nose. Brimming with love for everyone, I wanted to kiss Toria. More than any man. But then with Daniel, inhaling line after line in bathrooms and tapas bars and petrol stations, at the beach, and in bed, the drug turned, and chased me like a dog.
All I wanted was to sleep, to forget. Behind closed shutters, I swigged vodka from the bottle, picked at the label with bitten down nails. Patterns in the marble floor tiles spun on a turntable. Outside, sunlight torched the balcony and I numbed myself more and walked and walked and didn’t draw, didn’t listen to music. But it was never silent.
Loud, the air loaded with sea salt. Loud, the stifling warmth. Loud, the muezzin’s call, the bugle at the barracks, the wind combing sand from the desert onto cars.
On a sheet of paper, I trace the coast of Africa and the coast of southern Spain. I know it by heart, the contours engraved in me. And I remember the horizon, a line streaked in every shade of blue.
Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch (UK) lives in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work appears in JMWW, Fractured Lit, Ilanot Review, Litro, Gone Lawn, and others. She is a Fractured Lit Flash Open Contest Finalist, was shortlisted for the National Flash Fiction Day 2023 Micro-Fiction Competition, and received an Honourable Mention in the 2023 Scribes Prize.