Gemotions

It was the end of the day, and Liam was sprawled on his couch, exhausted after a grueling shift at the campus coffee shop. The scent of stale coffee still clung to his clothes. He'd been looking forward to a long, uninterrupted evening, but all he could manage was to stare blankly at the ceiling. The ceiling seemed to rotate slowly.

His phone buzzed repeatedly. A campus-wide email. He ignored it. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he dragged himself up to check. It was as if his mind couldn’t process the information at first. The words blurred, and he blinked, trying to focus. The university was shutting down.

A profound sense of emptiness settled over him. His dreams, his future, evaporated in an instant. He sank back onto the couch, the weight of the news pressing down on him, turning him into a solid, unmoving mass.