18.

Outside however, I was rapidly losing control of my own mind. I couldn't even think anymore. There was just pain. The environment was too loud, my surroundings were too bright, and the overwhelming smell of exhaust and fumes only added to the skull splitting ache in my head.

I also wasn't walking properly. Constantly staggering and stumbling, I kept bumping into people on the sidewalk while I constantly apologized and apologized. Eventually, I accidentally bumped into a girl and her smart phone and, for a moment, nothing happened.

The person I had bumped into, the girl, did not say anything. She did not do anything, and she didn't even try to grab her phone as it slowly flew out of her hands. She just stood there, frozen in a moment of shock. Her phone, hadn't really began to fall either. It was still stuck in the process of flying out of her hands. Slowly. Very slowly. It was then I took a quick glance around my surrounding, and was instantly dumb-stricken by what I saw.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Nothing was moving.

No one was moving.

It was almost as if everything and everyone suddenly came to a screeching halt, drastically slowing down in the process. Vehicles. Birds. Bikes. People. Absolutely nothing was moving as fast as they did a second ago, and it was all so surreal to witness. My heart in that moment, wasn't really beating loud or fast anymore. It was now thumping rapidly, about a thousand beats per minute, so fast that it might have well been simply described as a steady vibration resonating around the left side of my chest. The whole experience only lasted for a few seconds but it felt like forever. And when time began moving again, the whole world sped up, and the girl's phone which was suspended in mid-air a moment ago came clattering onto the pavement.

As to be expected, the girl wasn't happy about her fallen phone. She was furious. She suddenly began hurling very angry words my way in a fit of rage, and I quickly apologized before getting out of there as fast as I could, not sparing her or her phone a second glance.