Gemotions

The office felt suffocating. Mark's tie felt too tight, his shoes too heavy. Each tap of the keyboard, each ring of the phone, seemed to amplify the internal chaos. The knowledge of his youthful indiscretions, now available for everyone to read, had sent him reeling.

He excused himself from the meeting, muttering something about a headache. The hallway blurred. He bumped into a co-worker, mumbled an apology, and kept walking. He needed space, time. He pressed the elevator button repeatedly, the action a useless attempt to speed time up.

He felt a pull towards the outside, where the world was big and the sky was vast, and the details of his past might seem trivial. He longed to be anywhere but here. The elevator doors finally opened, and he stumbled inside.