Ad Hoc Fiction

Intrusive Thoughts
Yeah, so I’m ordering a coffee – that’s normal. Or I’m at the gym sweating on the machinery – hell everyone sweats on the bloody machinery. Whatever, it’s all normal on the outside. But in my mind I’m picturing a train wreck; bits of shredded metal and indistinguishable biological mess, people screaming.

The thoughts just come. Today the thought is me bleeding from my face. I’ve caught it on the edge of a pig trough as a thug forces my face into slop. I think, “What if that happens?”

Sometimes the thought is my girlfriend trapped under rubble at an abandoned building site or my brother having his teeth knocked out at a bar.

I never call to check. I mean, you just can’t can you? You have to convince yourself that no one is tied up and gagged or drowning. You have to get on with ordering coffee or sweating your bloody guts out.