Terror, Sheer Terror

• Zoe Anne Laxamana, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2019

For the briefest moment, everything stopped. And in that second it took me to compose myself, I felt terror. Sheer terror.

My head was spinning, and my vision blurred, and in the half a second before I blanked, I saw everything. I could see the fuzzy masses that were my friends sitting there on the bed. I could see the solid wall of blue behind them, the shaking objects that were his furniture. But the only clear thing I saw before I blacked out, was his face, and that look of expectancy etched in his features. It scared the hell out of me.

In that moment, my body felt like two opposites, my insides froze and yet my stomach was churning. The realisation of my situation swept over me, alongside what felt like a cold wash going down my back, while fear of its consequences scorched and boiled my insides. It felt like a lead weight had dropped into my stomach, and yet I was lightheaded to the point it seemed I was floating. Half of me could see everything around me. That part of me knew where I was, what was happening. The other part of me was hiding in a world far away. In a world I wanted to run to. But I couldn’t. My every instinct told me ‘run’, but something inside me was screaming not to. It was almost like my muscles became defective, and I couldn’t do anything.

The feeling flooded my mind with scene after scene of consequence, thousands of thoughts about everything it could mean. My mind raced to the point where I couldn’t even understand my own thoughts. It broke me. With every word, flash, scene, whatever happened in my head, I just got so much more scared. If he knew, I couldn’t face him at school tomorrow. I couldn’t face him ever. I couldn’t survive having to see him again, not if he had that knowledge. I couldn’t bear to have him tease me, or judge me, and I couldn’t bear to have him know, even if nothing else changed. I finally understood what makes a secret so hard to tell, even if you know no one would tease you, judge you, or change the way they act around you. You just can’t look at that person the same way again. I could lose him, and that scared me more than anything.

A second passed. After a moment of panic, dread, horror, fear, terror, my head stopped spinning, and my vision cleared. I started functioning enough to laugh out a lie.

But for the briefest moment, everything stopped. And for the briefest moment, I felt terror. Sheer, terror.