Gemotions

The world felt… tilted. Amelia stood on her porch, her gaze fixed on the tangled mess of limbs that had once been Mr. Henderson's prize-winning maple. The air was thick with the scent of freshly broken wood, a scent that usually held the promise of autumn, but now felt tainted.

She couldn't seem to breathe right. The event, the sudden, violent shift in the landscape, had unmoored something inside her. She felt compelled to tidy up, to fix the world. She went back inside and straightened all the pictures on the wall. Each one, she made sure, was perfectly aligned. She began to scrub the floor, even though it was already spotless. She ran the vacuum cleaner through the house. The rhythmic hum of the machine was the only thing that seemed to quiet the frantic thumping in her chest.