Waving Not Drowning

This is an incredible moment of panic. Opening up the freezer and not finding the stash of emergency chocolate. The really expensive kind, too. Fair trade, organic, chips of mint, maybe coconut, she can't remember. It was a spontaneous purchase for occasions just like this one. She knows better. Stay away from the computer. Flashing across her screen. His face. The date. The announcement. Probably as close as she'll ever come to skydiving without a parachute. She imagines that this is what it feels like. Her vision blurs, she feels her pulse pound through the veins in her neck like a torture porn movie, and waits for her heart to explode. Any second now. This is it. Old ghosts. Living in her psyche. Lining her fascia, sheathing her entire body. Tiny tubular webbing filled with fluid, stretching and undulating, tightening, seizing, creating adhesions. Blocks. Sticking patterns. She needs to break it down before it hardens into more scar tissue around her heart. Again. Months of ...

There's no way for him to describe it other than random shots of energy, like lightning pulses traveling up from the inside of his groin out through the top of his head. Bum tickles, she calls them. He thinks it's more like the feeling you get when you're at the top of the roller coaster and about to drop into that death defying plunge. Terrifyingly thrilling. Heartstopping, pure adrenaline rush with  slight aching pain. He wishes he could control them. They come at unsuspecting moments, in jolts, sometimes waves, at the most inappropriate times. Standing in line for a coffee and he spasms like he's being electrified. Almost a seizure but faster, more spastic. Powerful yet fleeting, ephemeral. He vocalises, too. Can not help it. A climbing scale, sort of a vocal warm up elicited under duress. He's discovered  notes he didn't know he had, crazy high tenor opera sounds. Maybe he should look into that. A second career. She laughs. Until it happens five times  in a ...

Something about the timbre of her voice gives Pete a rash. That itching he gets at the back of his throat at the beginning of an allergic reaction, this is how he feels whenever she comes on the radio. Mary's voice is the aural equivalent of tree nuts and strawberries for Pete. Not a good thing considering the public radio station he listens to religiously has moved Mary over to the morning show from 5:30 to 8:30 am. The one upside is that she only does the traffic report; it's timed to ten minutes past the thirty and the hour so Pete can physically remove himself from the sound if he's in a room or if he's fast enough, mute it entirely. Still, he is plowing through his Benadryl which is making him rather sloppy at work. Coworkers wonder if he's developed a sleeping disorder. Maybe he's high from the night before- with Pete, no one can really tell; and as no one can see his hive-covered esophagus, Pete's not entirely convincing to his coworkers. He's tho...