Panic

Here it comes. I can hear it approaching deep inside my skull. It has long, thin fingers - no, not fingers, but tentacles, turning and twisting and squeezing through to the tiniest cavities.

It starts from my stomach. It always starts from there, stirring it up, heating it until I feel the burn. From there it climbs to my throat. It strangles me ever so slightly, like to remind me that it could tighten its hold any time to make sure not a single sound escapes through anymore. When it reaches my lungs, forcing me to breath more than I need, I know I've lost the struggle that I hardly even started yet. Soon it is hammering my every muscle, making me shake violently like the fragile leaf that I am.

The world around me grows small. I'm trapped inside a small hole with hazy edges. Outside everything is dark and misty. Inside, where I'm soundlessly screaming, everything is too much: it's too bright, too many confusing colours, and loud, so very loud even though no vibrating air is reaching my eardrums. It drowns me, threatens to drag me down and imprison me in the depths forever. I feel like I have already been forever in a hell where time means nothing.

I want to vomit it out. My mouth gets filled with saliva, my stomach cramps trying to force out the evil that is disrupting its calm existence. But the cord around my throat squeezes tighter and it screams straight into my brain “NO!” That's the one thing I cannot do. It tells me that vomiting would not make me feel better but instead it would make everything worse, it would be the most horrifying thing I've ever experienced. I might think, it tells me, that this hell where I'm in is bad, but actually I'm only at the door. If I'd let the reflex through, if I even tried to purge it away, I would open the doors to a real hell where all hope is lost.

I give in and let it have its way with me. It shakes me so bad that I would fall off a chair if I wasn't on the cold floor already. I get a few tears out from between my tightly squeezed eyelids. I struggle for air even though I'm gulping huge amounts of it by panting with shaky breaths. I'm locked here for all eternity unable to think of anything else but this hell and this moment.

Finally it has grown tired of playing with me. It withdraws its disgusting tentacles that have little thorns on them that scrape me as they slither over me. It takes a while for my body to come to halt. My throat has been burned, my muscles still twitch with aftershocks, and my teeth don't dare to make a gap between my jaws yet. Ever so slowly the noise quiets down, the lights reach the outside world again, and time resumes its stroll with shaky legs. It's gone and I'm still here, painfully aware that it's never far away. It will come again.