A quiet testing room.
Legs are crossed under desks.
The rustle of paper, the scratching of pencils.
You scribble down answers, stopping to think every few words.
Scratch, scratch. Rustle, flip.
Your pencil is slowly getting shorter, but the change is so subtle you only notice it when you think about it.
Hunched over, your form concentrated on the sole thing before you: the test.
Suddenly, the clock is louder.
You can hear it ticking seconds away, but they seem wrong, irregular.
Too slow then too fast and why is the clock so wrong it's not supposed to do that.
The pencils are louder. It feels like it's grating in your ears.
The papers flip flip flip rustle
Breathe Breathe Calm down.
But that goal is as unattainable as the clock righting itself.
And you just try to plow through your assignment but your own pencil is as loud as your neighbors'.
And you just try to read the questions but the voice in your head is just as loud, just as irregular. Just as jumbled.
It's not working this isn't working.
Breathe Breathe Calm down now.
You bite your knuckle as hard as you can. Harder harder harder just something to focus on.
That's not working.
The voice in your head is keeping time with the clock.
Which is to say failing in impossible slowness and racing out of control.
Breathe. Breathe.
You want to shout to the sky
to see if your voice is as bad as your thoughts.
To test if sound is really broken.
And it seems like just doing that would right the world again.
But you can't this is a test and the quiet must be
preserved.
So you put your watch right up close to your ear.
And focus. Focus focus.
Timing your breaths with the little analog clicks.
But as soon as you stop it's back.
Racing out of control and keeping you from focusing and yet somehow making you focus too much on everything.
It's back.
The Panic Attack.