The noise after the silence was jarring- a thousand angry bees invading my mind. Without the need for walls to keep the constant noise of people at bay, the same walls I’d built myself after a series of increasingly painful lessons, I must have lowered them for the first time since their construction, because I could. I’d never been able to do that before. I’d seen a man drown once. Each time his head broke the surface he’d gasped- a reflex of desperation. This was my reflex of desperation.

Sudden need for the walls that I’d let down overwhelmed me. I tried to rebuild them but it was already too late. Thoughts not my own, cascaded over me like a tidal wave and my sense of self faded into a rushing sea of faces and emotions. Mistresses and lovers, wives and husbands, parents and children, friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers reached toward me. Grasping hands pulled me down into blackness.

I screamed. One became three, three became a chorus, the chorus became a multitude, all screaming with me.