He was starkly out of place, an unexpected guest star in her home schema, cognitive incongruity making him one of the three main elicitors of fear. Tall and silhouetted against the great white wall she had been begging her husband to paint. Instantly threatening and cognition gave way to biology. She began to sweat in her thick winter coat, blinking rapidly, the snow dislodging from her lashes in powder puffs. She stood in the hallway, frozen in a tableau of terror. In the split second it took for him to identify he had been interrupted, everything came into sharp relief. The smell of dying flowers, a bouquet from her Mother she’d been meaning to throw out. The breakfast bowl she'd left out this morning, leaving a ring on the TV guide it sat on. The sound of her breathing, shallow, as her nervous system addressed the situation en route to its fight or flight decision. The feeling of her cold, hard keys clenched in a fist that had spasmed into permanence.

‘What are you doing?’

He said nothing. She could hear his heart, thudding as loudly as her own.

They feared each other equally.

Her mind had shut down and she was existing on the precipe of an instant.

Relinquished control to instinct.

Original image by limonada
Courtesy of Creative Commons