LASER FOCUS

LASER FOCUS

D.M. Tomkins

I don’t mind crowded elevators, but I hate crowded rooms. With all the bodies smushed together, the room grows hot and stifling. The air thickens, and my skin burns from the heat. It congeals around me, a gelatinous mass that holds me in place. I am trapped. Bodies pressed together push towards me, and I must pull myself out of the room before I am crushed.

It is different on an elevator. On an elevator, crowds are expected. On an elevator, everyone knows what they’re signing up for. It would be arrogant to assume you are the only person who needs to move vertically through the world. There is something familiar, a certain camaraderie, about being squished into a group of strangers all waiting to reach their destination. For a brief moment, you’re all going through the ups and downs of life together. Even if you are uncomfortable throughout the ride, there is an assurance that everyone will eventually reach their stop and be free to leave. You enter an elevator expecting it to be uncomfortably full.

Rooms, on the other hand, are not supposed to be filled. There should be space in rooms. Space to move, swing your arms, and space to breathe. Space to exist. That’s why crowded rooms are so uncomfortable. It’s not the crowd itself, but the feeling that everyone there is misplaced. Like dishes placed in an overflowing cupboard: everything fits, but there’s a constant danger of spilling out.

Heat traps you in your body. When you are overheated, you cannot ignore your body. The dripping sweat, the burning skin, the exhaustion, all serve as keen reminders of the frailty and finality of your body. You cannot escape your body.

Feeling the softness of this oversized chair, I want to escape my body. I want to sink until the armrests tower over me and I am consumed in the stuffing of the furniture. To be soft like this chair would be wondrous. The chair never feels its innards churning; it cannot feel its stitching coming undone. The only thing the chair feels is a delicate warmth— not an overbearing heat— when someone like me finds themselves wishing to drown in it.

The room grows louder. The TV is no longer the loudest thing in the room. Someone raises their hand and spins the fan hanging from the low ceiling as they pass by, but the room only grows hotter. In the corner, a rickety fold up table holds two teams of red plastic cups. They stand in formation on opposite sides of the table, pitted against each other. As the game goes on, the crowd at either end swells. Raucous voices reverberate throughout the room and break my reverie.

My surroundings swim back into vision, but they do not focus. Angles are too round. Borders are too nondescript. Objects blend into one another in a sea of sound and color. The current threatens to drag me down. I am trapped. I will drown if I stay here. When I get outside, I can hear nothing but my own breathing. The air is frozen. When I lift my foot it takes hours to descend again. Each step carries me miles, until finally I am home; alone, blanket taut around my shoulders, warm, in my own chair to drown in.

Sometimes expecting something does not make it easier. I expected to be in a classroom when I enrolled, but still I was trapped. I remember my heartbeat. It’s all I could hear. It deafened all other noise. My whole body shook. My heel tapped — up and down, up and down — continuously. The vibrations constricted my throat. I couldn’t speak. My head pounded. I felt the convulsions in my temple. My chest thundered, shaking my whole psyche.

I sat there for hours, trembling from the inside out. Surely someone would notice I was out of place. Someone would see the fire that burned my face. Someone would feel the earthquake coming from my chest. No one said anything.

My name was eventually called, and I raised my hand.

The lecture began, and my pen moved across the notepad. Markings appeared on the page, but I could not read them. The classroom blurred like a watercolor.

There was a black spot on my desk. A speck of ink from an uncapped pen. I stared at it, trying to burn it away. I imagined a great blaze surrounding the desk, its remains left blackened and charred. Maybe the heat would scorch us both.

Untitled - Ellie Closen