Ignotus Dolor

Ignotus Dolor: An unknown pain that derives from an unknown place

Renee Dawn was walking the aisle behind her two friends. Suddenly, a massive pain struck her left ankle and she fell down on the ground as though she was shot in the back. She suffered from thousands of injuries in her life, but this was different. She never felt such pain. She grabbed her ankle as soon as she fell down as if pressing it hard would magically heal the unknown pain. Constance, Renee’s friend who was walking in front of her, turned around as she heard a small astonished sigh.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Apparently, Renee was not. She held her ankle for another thirty seconds and stood up since she couldn’t stay all night on the floor. The pain challenged her to walk straight, so she limped every step. Soon after, others who noticed something went wrong with her asked if she was alright. She smiled slightly, trying to gather herself together, but it wasn’t easy. Since Renee kept limping, Constance helped her walk.

Most pains usually disappeared in a few hours so she hoped the pain would subside, but, this time, it didn’t for another two days. When the pain was intolerable, she went to see a doctor. After she took an x-ray, she heard that everything was perfectly fine. The doctor told her that she might have an infection but she wasn’t sure what the reason could be. Renee couldn’t recognize the origin of her infection. The doctor prescribed her some strong drugs to reduce the pain. She had to take it three times a day after meals for three days and visit the doctor again. She was not pleased with the prescription, because she wasn’t sure this pain was accompanied by infection. She felt it in her bones there was something else that caused her pain.

Renee took a pill that evening after supper, but the pill didn’t seem to work. The pain in her ankle irritated her every moment so much that it took hours longer to finish her homework. The distance between her bed and her desk was not far at all, but she limped five steps to lay down on her comfy bed. When she lay on her bed and put on the blanket, she pondered what might have caused this unknown pain. She hadn’t done anything that would’ve hurt her ankle. However, the strong pain in her ankle disrupted her from thinking about what she had done. The darkness was a visual lullaby for her. It interfered with her thinking and put her to sleep. Still, she was able to ponder while sleeping, through her dream. A dream that was so vivid that she thought it was real. Inside her dark and wispy wondering, she went into a house that was very dusty and dark. After closing the door, she collapsed on the floor looking at the half broken moon. From her pockets, she took out her cigarettes and started to smoke. The smoke that floated from the tip of her cigarettes slowly covered the moonlight like a veil.

“Fuck…” She said with a sigh.

When she opened her eyes, it was morning. She felt bad about the dreams she had last night. Smoking was the only thing she hated. Mostly because she had breathing problems for a few years. Whenever she saw people smoking on the streets, she held her breath and left the scene as soon as possible. Renee sighed, still inside her bed, and recalled her unpleasant dream. As she crawled out from her bed, she changed her clothes and took her bag on her right shoulder with her laptop in her left hand and went out the door. She still limped until she arrived at the lecture room. Constance had already arranged her seat, so she sat next to her.

“I had this weird dream last night,” Renee relayed to her friend after class. She waited for Constance to pack her stuff.

“You always dream of weird things,” Constance replied, still busy with her bag.

Constance was used to listening to Renee’s odd dreams, the dreams she remembered for days. It was interesting to hear what happened in her friend’s dreams, because Constance never dreamed or remembered her dreams. Out of all the dreams Renee had, both Renee and Constance believed that the most bizarre one was somebody shouting at Renee to run away. Soon some soldiers would break into her gloomy looking house and start to fire guns off. They both found it interesting because Renee remembered the structure of her cramped house in detail.

“I was smoking this time and I felt some kind of pain in my lungs as if I were really smoking cigarettes.”

Renee was one of those people who abhorred drinking and smoking. Constance understood why her friend was freaking out at such a dream. She would feel awful too if she dreamed of something that she hates, like becoming surrounded by a bunch of spiders.

“Why were you smoking in the first place?” Constance asked in front of the vending machine.

Her friend leaned on the wall and waited for Constance’s drink to come out. She was not simply waiting for the drink; she was rewinding what happened during her nightmare. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and pondered until something came into her .

“That’s the problem. I don’t recall.”

The vending machine spat out Constance’s coke. As Constance reached for her drink, Renee tried to remember the full story of her dream. She remembered pieces of her dream but somehow couldn’t connect them as a whole.

“Then it probably was nothing,” her friend said after drinking her coke.

She offered her the drink, but Renee refused it. Coke was not important at this moment because she felt it in her bones that her dream was real. “Real” meaning it did happen somewhere. She only didn’t know where and why.