Synaesthesia Magazine Red | Page 10

...The thought of seeing her made him sweat in that little area behind his knees.

On the morning of the reunion, he couldn’t eat a thing. The very sight of food made him nauseas so he decided against taking the train. The lover set off just before noon and walked the two-mile stretch along Main Street, towards the girl in the wall. He bowed his head against the rain and dodged pedestrians, cars and motorcycles. Twelve. Ten. Five paces away from his prize, his beauty, the immortal Annie. At last, the pilgrim had reached his holy place. He peeled his hair away from his forehead and blinked at her in horror. She was spoiled. The girl in the wall had been wrecked. Her rough jacket had been washed with lime paint and she was frightfully porcelain; her face was as white as a Geisha's. Blue skies replaced her pink fleshy colour, and a rainbow stretched across her entire frame. He could no longer make out Annie’s shape; her creases were lost in the mural. The lover knelt before her and shook his head in disbelief.

Children pressed their dirty palms up against her. Strangers gaped at her garish outfit. People couldn’t get enough of her. She became a place of worship - a brightly coloured altar on the side of the road. This saddened him. He had liked her much more when she was bare, natural looking and without all the make-up! She looked like an amateur, a clown or some desperate ‘fille de joie’ and he wanted nothing more to do with her. He found that he could no longer love her - for the girl in the wall belonged to somebody else.