Noises swirl all about your presence, devouring your attention and drowning your thoughts. Every movement is muffled by claustrophobic intrusions, and mitigated by constrained maneuverings from every corner. Heavy breathing screams into your ears whilst olfactory sensors are offended by malevolent intrusions. Every step takes you deeper into the mire, and each forced smile is a strain on your sanity. False pretenses and feigned conversations claw at the fiber of your very being. From above, the searing simulations of Sol singe your synapses, offering no sympathy to the senses.

Sloth and decay crowd corral you in. The people are as cattle, herded into the storm of consumption. Want, want, want! Always pushing. Push, push, push! Never enough.

You are overcome with derision. The erudite is betrayed in the wake of the basest impulse. The demands are exceeding your limit. You’d give anything to have so much as a bubble of sanity and solace.

So, much, noise!

* * *

A dream from which I so often try to wake up from. The conceptually simple act of shopping is a living nightmare for those like me. I know that I am not alone in this.

FIN