What's The Worst... Chapter 12

He opened his eyes; realised that he didn’t know how long he’d been lying there. He stretched out, sat up and looked around. He realised that he couldn’t hear anything; not just an absence of voices and laughing and whining, but an absence of anything. He looked around. The scene was far from empty; shoppers, children, birds, the general hubbub of a busy high street.

As he looked more closely; in some cases straight into the faces of those around him, he noticed that they did not seem to be aware of him, they didn’t seem to register that he was staring at them. The more he looked the more he was aware of the way that those on the move seemed to drift around him, making subtle changes of direction if they were coming towards him.

A tall, dark man coming straight for him was intercepted by a young girl pushing a buggy causing him to veer left.

A gaggle of young girls, arms linked, moving in harmony turned away as one, responding to another girl waving frantically in the distance.

A lone shopper, striding purposefully forward was deflected by a startled pigeon rising immediately in front of them.

He watched the choreographed avoidance with rapt interest.

Eventually, as he watched, the scene shimmered, shifted, as if a curtain was lifting. The deluge of sound hit him with a physical force. He could clearly hear the din of the crowd around him, but above it all was the shrieking. He cringed back into his seat; this time he saw one or two people react to his sudden motion.

Whatever had enveloped him, insulating him from the world, protecting him from his torment had lifted; the sense of calm departed, swiftly replaced by a coldness, a sinking feeling of desperation. It was as if the unexpected respite had heightened his perception of his reality; the feeling of those who suffer chronic pain, have it temporarily eased only to be returned to their suffering.

He stayed slumped in his seat, unable to clear his mind, unable to think, to choose a course of action.