Fractured

Darkness.

Cold and strange, like big rolling clouds, heavy and black closed in. The wind picked up, howling and screaming through nooks and crannies, whipping my skirt around my legs and my long brown hair into my face.

Only moments before, the sun had been shining. Beating down on my too white skin, sweat prickling my top lip.

I let my eyes travel up to the sky, as if I could see through the swirling, churning moodiness right to the answers. I huffed a breath out through my nose and gritted my teeth. Any idea of what I had been doing gone, all thoughts wiped clean.

A cold hand clenched my chest, breath coming short and ragged. An overwhelming sense of doom enveloped me. A sound to my left made me start- my hearing heightened as my mind descended into chaos.

I’m going to die. I thought. It’s going to pour, I can’t see a thing and I’m lost, alone with nowhere to go. Plus, that guy has been following me for blocks now. I’m definitely dying today.

My knees buckled and eyes blurred as overwhelm took hold.

“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” I muttered to myself, the gruffness of my voice surprising me. I balled my hands into fists, relaxed them momentarily before clenching them up again. Focusing on the feeling, putting all my energy into noticing how rough my skin felt, the groaning and cracking of my knuckles, the stiffness of those joints. Letting my racing mind still in order to get myself back under control.

I took a breath, held it and exhaled. The skin around my chest tingled but I was able to come back to myself, somewhat. My nerves jittered but I could feel a tepid sense of composure creeping in, an almost calm. At least, as calm as I was going to get.

Releasing my fists again, I sighed. The icy hand still held my chest hostage- tight and relentless but the rest of my body and senses were returning to normal. The man who had been walking behind me strode past, oblivious to me.

“Silly girl.” Muttered my logical self, the tiny part of me that had known all along he had no business with me. Unfortunately, it was also the part which was diminishing, day-by-day, moment-by-moment. The darkness was taking up more and more of me as the minutes ticked by, leaving me less and less of the person I had once been.

A mere shell- nervous, confused, pathetic and useless.

I straightened my back, held my head hight and pretended I was under control as I started back up the street.