Her fingers were fidgety, she couldn't keep them still on her denim jeans lap. She could feel her heart beating, strong and irregular against her chest. It felt as if it would beat out of her flesh and tear off her striped shirt and run away to a more suitable system of a mortal; one without a breathing nuisance so that the heart can work without straining itself to make ends meet, that is, to keep the master of the body alive. Her mouth was dry, her lips chapped from her biting it. Her hand moved to the covers of her bed, clutching it for dear life, literally. She felt that if she doesn't calm down anytime soon, she would actually die of tachycardia; of her heart beating too fast. She closed her eyes finally, and took a long deep breath several times, hoping desperately that her heart would tame down and her breathing would regulate again.
"Cora".
Her eyes opened instantaneously.
Nothing. No one.
Suddenly her heart was beating normally again, or close to normal. Her eyes adapted back to the vision that was her room. Light blue walls, a bedside table with a white lamp on her right, a study table with a chair with rollers to her left by the two-paned window and her small closet in front of her. She suddenly felt the urge to laugh when a sudden realization manifested in her head. What would she seem like if someone had walked in on her just a few seconds earlier? She probably looked like a terrified little kid who's afraid of the monster residing in her closet; a monster with a castle of doom and magic terror dust of anxiety that the monster sprinkles on her for entertainment. Yeah, that's it.
She took another deep breath. Suddenly she felt light again; all the heaviness and dreadfulness of not being able to breathe liberated off her. She closed her eyes again and laid back onto her bed, her feet touching the carpeted floor.
That was how it usually happens. One second she could be reading a book or talking to a friend on the phone and the next she would feel like she's drowning in the deepest sea, struggling to take a breath, to break into the surface again. There were several occasions that she tried to fathom of what made her that way, that several seconds or minutes of terror, but to no avail. So, she has been trying to deal with it, in her own odd ways, of the frightening few hundred seconds of her life every now and then. Sometimes she would be aware and of it, other times she's not.
She put her arm over her eyes and took another deep breath, feeling exceptionally worn out as she threw herself back down onto her bed. The bed creaked in protest.
Her phone buzzed viciously on her bedside table, to which she jumped to, a slight panic encircling her again.
She took a moment to calm herself back down and pushed herself to roll over on her bed and grabbed her phone.
She lit up when she saw the caller ID on her screen.
It was enough to push the horror back into her terror closet.
Enough to light her up again.
