• This was it, the pain she didn't want to feel, and she could make it stop – ahh.... But then the rumbling returned and she squeezed her eyes shut and the head that wasn't hers rolled back in its grip. AHH! Anguish that could so easily be quelled must not be real. But if it wasn't, where in all imagination did it come from?

    What are the chances this is something I've imagined for myself, this hysteria? Is all the evidence just my mind playing out its fears?

    I can't count on that.

    And it went, and it returned, and it left and came again, as she experimented with her hiding. She couldn't carry in her something bigger than herself – and so she poked at it and wondered where it came from, all the hurt she never knew was there until she saw someone who thought it wasn't. She grasped her pillow and breathed into it with the desperate need that her irregular gasps not be heard. Its half suffocation was acceptable trade-off. Was it strength that enabled her to contain this energy, this evilness inside her, or was it weakness that kept it at bay?

    I am no longer myself.

    Something about undeniable depths might have been appropriate, if she was willing to think it. And life goes on.




    Wait, I hide emotions in my LUNGS?!