Gemotions

"Twenty years?" Mark repeated aloud, his voice sounding thin even to his own ears. He slumped back in his chair, the office around him suddenly feeling too small. He crumpled the invitation and tossed it into the trash. The crumpled paper looked oddly like a discarded, failed project.

He was due at a meeting in fifteen minutes, but suddenly the idea of public speaking, of making decisions, felt utterly impossible. He found himself fiddling with the stapler on his desk, taking it apart and putting it back together again. The noise was a futile attempt to occupy his mind. His colleagues were probably wondering where he was.