"What did I even do to deserve all this?"
After kicking away a stray pan – though most of them were stray at that moment – Tracy closed her eyes and clenched her hair in her hands. Pulling it tight helped to quell the thundering migraine that had been lingering behind her right eyebrow for days.
Worse yet, her dream-world visions hadn’t happened in almost a month.
She let go of her hair and began to massage her temples with her thumbs. There was so much stress in her life, so much to deal with all at once. Surely that had to be the cause, because the alternative made Tracy literally feel ill. To have that kind of power, to be able to see people's dreams, and then have it ripped away was the cruelest sort of joke.
On the other hand, it was one less responsibility she had to put up with.
From the back, a loud clanking of a different sort made Tracy open her eyes and look up. Someone was knocking.
The knocking repeated.
"Hello?"
It was Mr. Hayes, his voice heavily muffled by the heavy back door. Tracy forced herself upright.
"I’m coming! One second."
She dragged her feet around the corner and threw all of her weight against the door, which popped open with yet another clatter. Waiting on the other side with a bottle of wine, and a smile from ear to ear, Mr. Hayes held his arms out for a hug.
Outside, the clear sky had turned into a silky shade of deep navy blue. It had been almost noon when Tracy arrived, so the darkness that had fallen caught her a little off guard.
"Hey there." He tried to meet her distant gaze. "How’s it going?"
Tracy blinked slowly and looked to her right, where the remnants of the saucepan avalanche were still plainly visible.
"It’s going."
Mr. Hayes let his arms drop and walked in. He peered around the corner for a moment, then turned back to her with a look of concern painted across his face.
"Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"
"No, no." She shook her head and touched his arm. "The stack just fell over. I’m fine. It’s just that this headache is killing me."
After setting the bottle of wine down on an empty storage rack that was destined for cases of fresh vegetables, Mr. Hayes wrapped his arm around Tracy’s sunken shoulders.
"Still? Hasn’t it been a few days now? I thought you were going to go see the doctor."
"Yeah. I mean, I think so."
He tightened his grip and led her through the kitchen.
"You know, I can have someone come in and do all of this for you without all the stress."
They pushed through the swinging doors and into the dining room. Mr. Hayes carefully guided her to a seat.
"No," she said with a firm tone, and let herself sink into one of the few dining room chairs still on the floor. The rest had been flipped and placed on the table-tops to make sweeping and mopping easier. "You know that I don’t want the help. I want to do this myself. I need to do it myself."
Mr. Hayes held both hands up like he was trying to prove that he wasn’t armed. "Okay, okay," he said softly. "I take it that you won’t be wanting any wine, either?"
Tracy looked up to him and scrunched her eyebrows together to get a good look at him. The fog of pain had spread into her vision, making the periphery look like cloudy pools of water. Even when she spoke up again, her words were slow and careful.
"I don’t need any wine. Between this and not getting enough sleep, I already feel drunk."
"I see," he replied plainly, moving around her until he was standing behind her chair.
With both of his large hands, Mr. Hayes reached down and began to massage the throbbing cluster of muscles between Tracy’s neck and shoulder. With his thumbs, he made wide, sweeping movements over her shoulder blades.