A Penny

It's too hot around, maybe. She squirms in her bed, gets up cursing the October heat and fans herself with her hand, breathing heavily. She grabs the remote control of her AC and reduces the temperature. No, still not comfortable. She paces up and down in her room, wiping the sweat-beads off her forehead and sits at the edge of the bed, gulping down a glass of cold water. A little better now- she crawls back in her sheets. No, something pricks her back. She gropes the sheets and mattress, there is nothing that could prick. Mosquitoes maybe, she thinks.. She glances at the wall only to find the mosquito repellent plugged in to a socket. She clutches her head helplessly. She pulls a book towards her but she can't make a sense out of what she reads. Time is moving so slow, she thinks, so slow that she can hear every second that the clock is ticking away.

She glances at her phone, only to put it away.

What is it then, she asks herself annoyed.

Music? No, not a good idea at night. She hates music. It makes her vulnerable.

Maybe she should count numbers. Aaah no! Last night she counted till a thousand before she dropped the idea.

Talk to someone? To whom? There is no-one, she thinks, scrolling the contacts list in her phone up and down.

Breathless. Disturbed. Shaken. Restless. Frustrated.

She opens the locker in her steel cupboard and a chest of drawers and takes out several bundles of notes, a pocket full of coins and her gold jewellery and places on her bed. The smell of the pristine stiff currency notes, sick-sweet - tickles her nose in an almost unpleasant way. The metal of the coins is creepily cold against her sweaty skin. She traces her fingers on the gold.

All of it is mine. All this money and gold, she thinks. She doesn't feel as happy as she thought she would be. She can't smile. The hole in her heart is as empty as it was before, no matter what amount of money she has used to fill it. She counts how much money she would earn this year and the next and the year after that. Still so less, not enough, this is not enough to be able to forgive myself for the things I let people say, for the insults I endured because I didn't have money once, she cries pulling at her hair in frustration.

'Aren't you overrating money?' The Small Voice Inside Her Head asks her.

"No I am not!" she hisses angrily, "Without money, in this world you cannot even dream big. The mistake was that I always underrated it."

She spends the entire night counting money, recounting it. Every time she counts, she feels a penny is always less. One last penny that she thinks might satisfy her thirst. Always short of one penny she was, no matter how many she earned.