“My Head Bumps,” by Stephen Page

Stephen Page has a flash fiction published on Flash Fiction North–“My Head Bumps.”

https://www.flashfictionnorth.com/recentfiction

My Head Bumps

            Teresa and I have only one evening recreation left to participate in together ever since the coronavirus spread over the world like foamy sea-water over a pebbly shore—watching TV. We can’t go to the cinema, eat inside restaurants, go the ballet, opera, or theater, so we watch movies, TV series, news, and sports. I watch, alongside her, and I wonder, why don’t all the characters in the new movies and series wear medical masks? Why do they eat inside restaurants? Why don’t the cardboard cut-out fans in the otherwise empty baseball stadiums have medical masks painted on them?

            My head bumps, which started a month or two after COVID-19 became a pandemic, have suddenly cleared up. Two pharmacists and our hair-cutter, who comes to our apartment wearing a medical mask and rubber gloves, told me “They are grease eruptions, a result of nerves, fear, worry, and anger all together over a long period of time.” I thought, I am not a nervous person, I fear very little, but yes, I worry for my family and friends, but I am hardly ever angry.

            The bumps used to itch, and when I scratched them, they just spread. I thought that it was because I lent my hat to a friend who came visiting on a cruise ship just before the outbreak, like he had lice or something. I felt things crawling around on my scalp. Teresa and Cati scoured my scalp sever times and told me, “No lice.”

            Grey clouds and black sea outside. The wind is whipping the trees around

Our souls at night.

            Yesterday, I woke just after sunrise and prepared Teresa’s breakfast while she slept. Then I sipped a coffee on the balcony. The sky was blue and the sea also.

            When Teresa woke, and ate with me on the balcony, I drove her to Punta del Oeste. We picked up a few things at the pharmacy, then lunched on duck breast and whipped potatoes at La Chaise.

            The sleeping pills Teresa gave me have helped me sleep again, which I have not since my Dad died. I had stopped sleeping pills for six months and was just starting to feel normal again, withdrawal symptoms over, nightmares over, writing flowing smoothly, my short-term memory back, my speaking vocabulary returned—both in Spanish and English. But the news that My Dad died of a heart attack while waiting in a jammed hospital admissions room  while a line of twenty-some ambulances were lined up outside with COVID-19 affected patients inside each was a little devastating.

            Today, oh, I mean the other today, or maybe it was yesterday, Tuesday, no I mean Thursday, Lidia slipped into my office while I was writing, and poured herself a cup of coffee from my thermos. I thought I left her some in the carafe in the machine in the kitchen. We kissed, she flashed me a peach breast, my blood rushed, and we smiled at each other. 

When she left my office, I took my hands off the keyboard and I scratched my scalp.

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