Gemotions

The courtroom was stuffy, the air thick with tension. He sat there, a witness to the proceedings, forced to hear how *his* work had been deemed “derivative” of another’s. He felt a knot in his stomach, a dull ache that seemed to emanate from his very core. The lawyer's words, the expert's testimony, were like needles, pricking at his already wounded pride.

He focused on the grains in the wood of the courtroom bench, the only distraction from the suffocating atmosphere. He wanted to escape, to run far away from this travesty of justice, but he was trapped, a silent observer to his own intellectual demise. He fought to remain composed, but the humiliation was almost unbearable.