It crept up on her quietly this time, with no warning.
She was reading a book on her flight home. It was a good book. Mort by Terry Pratchett. She'd read it before, laughed out loud. But this time she found herself taking it very seriously.
She shut it halfway just as the flight was about to land. She looked up and swallowed hard. Quite suddenly she was aware of the countless strangers around her. Living breathing sweating people. Each looking different from the other, each with an entire history an entire life she knew nothing of and will never know anything of.
So? So what so what so what. She shook herself. The lady next to her grunted her disapproval and went back to drooling on the window. Argh, so what, why did it feel so weird. She turned to her right, and an old muslim gentleman on the other side turned left and stared straight at her.
She was the first to look away. She was surprised to see how much that had shaken her. Was he still looking? What if she hadnt looked away, would he have said something? Would what he said have changed her life?
She forced herself to look at him again, he was reading a newspaper. No. He isn't some messenger. No, reality as she knew isn't slipping away into crazy. Everyone's just normal doing normal things. Turbulence.
Is it going down? Will this plane crash? Are these thoughts you have when you know somehow that you're going to die? She grips her seat handles hard. She notices that the man to her right counting something with his fingers. What? What is it. What is it.
It's nothing. She is pleading with her brain to stop with the drama. The flight lands just fine. She can't get her heart to stop pounding.
She looks down at her hands, turns them over. Stares at her palms. She doesn't know why that action always grounds her, stops her from screaming.
She calms down, looks up.
She screams.
