Mallorca, Or The Body's Fever Dream Brookelynn Flores   © Copyright 2025 by Brookelynn Flores

Photo courtesy of the author.

The night wind tangles through my curled yet lightly-frizzed hair as the small bus hisses to life outside the terminal. The driver’s cigarette flickers as he waves me in. I don’t know why I’m here, not really. Just that something has been dragging me toward this edge of the map since the fever. Maybe the body knows before the mind does. Maybe the island called me to be rearranged.

The hotel is forty-five minutes away on the other side of town, but the cab driver doesn’t mind. Her English is soft, like water breaking on stone. She points at dark shapes through the window and names them. The cathedral, the harbor, the mountain with the old monastery. I nod, pretending to see yet all I want to do is listen to my playlist and daydream of the wonder peppering throughout my brain. Her perfume smells like tangerine and ocean spray, knocking me back into reality in motion. We don’t talk much since the salty wind does it for us.

I’m not thinking of sleep when we pull up to the hotel. Instead, my focus is on how the streets still hum at midnight, how there’s something almost sentient about the air here. A pulse that isn’t mine, yet courses through me anyway. The concierge smiles too wide, the kind of smile that implies I’ve been expected. Maybe I have.

In the room I take off my clothes and lie face down on the bed, letting the sheets cool the last of the plane from my skin. My phone glows beside me. Notifications pile up like pebbles on the shore. I swipe them away. I don’t want to belong anywhere for now.

I fall asleep before I can dream.

Five Days Earlier

The bite on my leg is still raw when the police come. Portuguese voices arguing outside the window, the word “animal” sharp as a blade. I sip the fermented liqueur that burns down my throat. I tell them no, I don’t want to press charges. The farmer forgot to lock his gate. The dog was scared, just like me.

When they leave, I lift the edge of the bandage and stare at the wound. Purple and angry, an opening. The air smells like iron and rosemary. I should feel afraid, but I feel nothing except the faintest hum behind my ribs, like static.

That night, as the moon hides its face, I ask the universe for a sign. Something, anything, to tell me I haven’t lost the thread. The word comes like a whisper behind my ear. Mallorca. I think I mishear it. I look it up anyway. Not a wine, as I assumed. An island. Off the coast of Madrid, close to Ibiza, the place I always said I’d go to dance myself clean.

I tell the universe fine, if the flight is cheap and the time is right, I’ll go. Both are. The flight appears as if waiting for me. I click purchase.

The music swells in my tiny Airbnb. My body moves without asking. I dance barefoot across the tile floor. I feel alive, briefly, then sad again. When Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” comes on, I

freeze. I never listen to her, not really, but something in her voice splits me open. A melancholy I didn’t know I’d been housing floods my chest.

I fall asleep that night without dreaming. When I wake, my Uber is already waiting outside, the countryside of Portugal still sleeping as I leave it behind.

---

Transit

Madrid airport is a cavern of glass and metal. Twelve hours stretch in front of me like a mirage. I drift through duty-free aisles and eat grapes out of a plastic bag. The announcements echo through the terminal in three languages, each version of the same command to keep moving.

When I finally board the evening flight to Mallorca, my body hums with exhaustion and expectation. The sky outside the plane window turns violet, then black. Somewhere below, the island waits, patient as an unopened wound.

---

Morning

The buffet smells like fruit that has been sliced hours ago. I wear whatever I want. A short white dress, bare shoulders, hair tangled from sleep. I catch people staring but don’t look back. Their curiosity is the same flavor as the air here: salty, endless.

The men stare too. Especially the ones who look like they haven’t been told no in years. They linger by the juice machine and pretend to stir sugar into their coffee. I pretend not to notice, though I feel every gaze like a soft tap on the back of my neck.

At the beach, two men mirror me. When I walk into the water, they walk into the water. When I float, they float. I move toward shore and they light cigarettes, pretending to read. I can feel the heat of their stares even with my eyes closed.

It’s not the first time a gaze has tried to script my body, but the island’s version feels different. The attention here is ancient, ritualistic. I’m the offering and the audience at once.

I leave the beach before the sun does and find a sushi bar glowing blue in the dark. I order alone and chew slowly, feeling the ocean still pulsing within me.

I want to go out dancing, but something tells me to wait. I scroll through nightclubs on my phone then decide on a well-reviewed one that’s forty-five minutes away. I buy a ticket for the following night’s DJ then book a hotel closer to it. I tell myself this is research for a life I haven’t written yet.

The Club

The next night begins with air so thick it feels drinkable. I step out of my hotel room in a black skirt and silver top that catches every light in the hallway. Two boys in their twenties watch me walk toward the elevator. Their silence is its own applause.

The cab ride smells like citrus and smoke. The driver says something about tourists and summer love. I let it wash over me as I stare out at the moonlight as it lights our highway’s path before us.

Outside the club, the crowd shimmers: men in linen, women in sequins, the sound of five languages blurring into one long sigh. Inside, light fractures across the mezzanine. I buy a drink, walk the perimeter, and let the bass move through me like an old memory.

A girl’s drink spills down my legs. A man with a French accent apologizes. He’s wearing a beret. I tell him not to worry. His smile is too careful.

Later, he finds me on the dance floor and offers me a piece of gum as a truce. I take it then ask him to hold my drink while I put in my ear protection plugs. He laughs when he realizes what I’m doing. He says he knows the DJ. I lie and say I do too.

He says he’s going to meet his brother. I ask where. He pauses, long enough for the silence to mean something. Then he says, “To take MDMA.” I ask if I can buy some. His eyes change as he stares into mine, as if he’s debating something no one else would ever know. After a few moments of tense surrender, a switch appears in his gaze. As if the door bell has rang within his psyche. He looks into my soul and says: “Follow me.”

He leads me through the crowd, his hand brushing mine without claiming it. We pass bodies that glow under ultraviolet light, sweat shining like dew.

Outside in the smoking courtyard, his friends are waiting. They stare like they’ve been briefed. His brother, blond and sharp-featured, holds a drink that looks like liquid candy. The girlfriend smiles at me like she’s been practicing.

The powder dissolves in my glass. I drink. The world rearranges itself.

Someone says I look French. Someone else says I look like trouble. The beret ends up on my head. A photo is taken. His sunglasses, his cigarette, his gaze. I am being recorded by a dozen invisible eyes, and yet it feels holy.

The music inside shifts. He asks if I want to dance. I nod. The gum is sweet between my teeth.

We move until we forget where our bodies end. The lights flash and I feel the edges of myself blur. His voice, low against my ear, asks, “Can I touch you?” I nod again.

Time dissolves. Hands, bass, color. The night folds itself around us like silk.

When the lights come up, we are still moving, slower now, like waves after a storm.

Aftermath

We walk to the beach. The street smells like beer and ocean. His silence has weight now. I buy a t-shirt from a shop that doesn’t take my card, so he pays. I don’t thank him.

At the sand’s edge, the waves are bruised blue. I take pictures. He talks about nothing. The sky lightens. He gets a call from his brother, who soon appears with the girlfriend and a single rose. He hands it to me, embarrassed. I pretend to blush.

When the sun finally rises, I leave. No one follows.

Back at the hotel, I fall asleep with my hair still wet. My phone buzzes with a message from him when I wake. He asks if I remember that he invited me to the beach again. I say I already went. He says maybe tonight then.

Hours later, I go. He is quieter, more deliberate. His friends tease. The girlfriend looks at me like she knows something I don’t.

He doesn’t offer me his drink. His brother scolds him in French. I pretend not to notice.

Later, we end up in a silent disco. He takes one of my earbuds, listens to my song, and for a moment we are perfectly synchronized. The street spins with color. People watch us as if we’re performing something sacred. I catch my reflection in a dark window and barely recognize the girl inside it.

At four in the morning, the world feels suspended. I say I’m leaving. He asks to come. I tell him no. Then I tell him yes.

The Room

His place smells like boys who don’t know how to clean. The shower runs while I stand naked by the window. He comes out dripping, eyes wide.

The first touch feels like déjà vu. He kisses me as if I’m the last secret he’ll ever keep. I let him.

There is a hunger in him that isn’t quite desire, more like disbelief. When he says he’s never done this before, I believe him. When he says he could do it forever, I know he can’t.

The night folds into itself. His breath against my collarbone. My thoughts scattered like coins on the floor. I leave before sunrise, my body trembling with a strange kind of grief I’d only recognize in the days to come.

Coda

The next day he messages me again. His tone has changed, polite now, rehearsed. He says meeting me was special. He says he will never forget. He tells me if I ever come to France, I should let him know.

We drink wine in my room. He looks at me like a photograph he’s already decided to keep or delete. The island hums outside my window. My soul already knows what it means but my mind refuses to accept this yet.

We make love again, slower, quieter. The sweetness is gone. When he leaves, I don’t watch him go. I let the weight of the weekend collapse onto the bed for one last time in this room.

Morning comes with light too sharp to bear. His final message appears hours later. He says he should have stayed because his Airbnb rental locked him out.

I block him that night. Change my username. Delete the photos I took of him.

Still, when I close my eyes, I can feel the rhythm of that club, the ghost of his touch, the pulse of the island in my throat.

The body remembers everything the mind tries to bury.

Maybe that’s why I came here. To see how much of myself I could lose and still make it back alive.

Mallorca sleeps behind me now, but in dreams, I still taste the salt.