Retrospections of a Poetic Cutthroat (H. S. AU)

3. Vertigo

vertigo (sp.)
a sensation of whirling and loss of balance

*****

When she wants to escape from everything, she runs. She runs as fast as she can, revels in the liberating sensation of the wind howling past her ears, the world  moving backwards and letting her be free.

Harper wishes she can forget. She dearly wishes she had an all-purpose eraser and use it to delete whatever misfortune she had stumbled upon and rewrite it as she deems fit. It's too bad that the worst events just stick to you like glue, making unwanted appearances, forcing you to remember them even when you try so hard to bury them deep enough so they never resurface at the edge of your consciousness.

So she runs as as fast as her legs can carry her and until the satisfying burn in her chest prevents her from moving forward.

Harper collapses on a bench and stares down into the murky waters of the Thames and just breathes. Her mind is as blank as it can ever be and her lungs are on the verge of combusting, hungry for vital oxygen.

One. Two. Three.

Her eyes close on their own accord as she lifts her shaky hands to adjust her high ponytail, tuning out every sound, focusing only on inhaling and exhaling.

It's underwhelming that she's come to the point where she needs an 'escape'. Back in the day she could do whatever she wanted and never had to face the consequences. She truly had the whole world at her feet.

Back then Harper could just disappear in a poof of smoke and turn up on the other side of the globe just because she felt like it, because everything was a whole lot easier.

Sadly, as much as she tries to not think about the past few days and all the hell she's been put through she can't. It's in her nature to overthink things, to approach, analyze and take the best course of action. Which brings her to this unfortunate moment.

Harper goes to great lengths to keep everything that happens in her life under control, under her control. Variables pop up at every corner in her field of work and most times you need to act on impulse, you're put on the spot, left to either make it or break it. That has to be the only thing she both loves and hates about what she does. The variables.

'Rule number one, always have a plan. Rule number two, always have a backup plan, preferably a backup plan for the backup plan as well.'

Those words have been collecting dust in the back of her mind but they never left her altogher. She's been raised like this, trained like this ever since she stepped out of her mother's flat without looking back once.

These past few days though, every plan she had, every trick in the book she knew was put to shame. It had all backfired horribly and for the first time in a very long time she's felt that her façade was crumbling and that she was pushed to the side with someone else taking the wheel, taking control of her life.

Only now does she realize that in that moment with Abrams and Harry Styles watching her, one angry beyond belief, the other amused to no end, she was scared.

Stunned into speechlessness and reduced to a mumbling little girl. Exposed and left out in the open for the wolves.

Needless to say that the quite lively discussion she had had with Abrams afterwards was less than pleasant, maybe due to the fact that she was not entirely focused on his booming voice or how he tried (and failed) not to yell in her face. She had gone into overdrive, gears turning and reevaluating the whole situation and only replying when she deemed it fit.