The END

  Is this the pain someone feels when they've been shot? Is this the pain someone feels when they've lost a limb? The questions kept flying through his head, along with a feeling of dread that spread throughout his body; slowly rendering his thoughts, movements and words into meaningless signals running through his nerves.

     Is this the feeling you get when you are standing in front of a firing squad , waiting for that pull of the trigger to end everything? Or the sense of dread that creeps up on you just before something goes terribly wrong in your life?

    Now everything was morphing together, concentrating all his fears and worries into a single point in his body. He felt the world closing in around him, trapping him in with his own fears and thoughts. He felt his breathing get faster and his senses shifted to a higher level. He felt aware of everything around him. Was this the end of the line for him? Would he actually be brought down here, so early on in his life?

   The fight or flight instinct in him seemed to be slowly coming to life. That was of course before it kicked straight into overdrive while completely ignoring the natural progression of fear and anxiety. Also his brain seemed to have forgotten the most important part of the fight or flight instinct; the fact that there were two options to be considered here, fight OR flight. Instead it immediately glossed over fight, picked flight and happily settled on that decision, closing off any argument from the small segment of his brain that was considering fight.

      So flight it was. But there was no way out. He was trapped here, surrounded on all sides by the enemy. They had cut off any possible means of escape for him. Their leader stood at the front of the room, staring him down, silently challenging him to make his first move. He glanced to his right, then his left. Yes, escape was not possible. And so his brain reluctantly abandoned flight, slowly moved away from it and opened up to the arguments of flight. That was of course not the affirmative but the negative side of the debate. To make a case for the negative, fight shouldn't be considered because we would be killed, annihilated, flattened, destroyed, turned to dust in the blink of an eye.

     Once his brain had exhausted the list of adverbs to describe the extent of the possible damage that could be inflicted upon him, it began to admire the iron clad nature of this argument. It was a very good point. His brain filed that away in the pros column of not fighting, before disdainfully turning towards the affirmative part of the debate.

    Well, we might just make it out alive. It's not a favorable percentage of survival, but its a chance nonetheless; his brain analyzed this argument carefully before concluding that the affirmative was absolutely and totally useless. His brain once again slammed the door in the face of the affirmative, locking it completely out of the debate.

   Ok so fight wasn't an option, but neither was flight. That was unless....we make a run for it. If we could get through the enemy lines we would be well and truly safe. But the obvious problem was, how could he get past them? His brain slowly organized the facts, neatly stacking them up to form a reasonable thought process. So flight was the only possible option, but he would have to distract everyone. If he could just distract the enemy, even for a moment, he might be able to make a run for it. But how could he distract them? He looked down at the backpack at his feet. If he threw it in the air, would everyone be distracted long enough for him to escape?

   No, it wouldn't be enough to distract everyone. There were too many of them surrounding him. At least one or two of them would still be able to cut off his escape route. He looked around, searching desperately for something else he could use, but there was nothing else near him. The carefully constructed thought process fell apart again. He was trapped, not being able to fight or flee. The sense of dread enveloped him again, but it was much more intense this time around. It had frozen his entire body and rendered him incapable of speech. His legs had turned to jelly and his breathing now sounded like a steam engine that was about to explode. He was finally beginning to accept his fate, this was the end for him and there was nothing he could do about it.

    The enemy was now getting restless. They started shouting at him to "get on with it". Their leader now stared harder at him, clearly getting more and more impatient as the time passed. Finally their leader opened her mouth. He braced himself for the end.

  " Come on John. Don't look so frightened. All I asked you to do was come to the front of the class and do your presentation. You did come prepared didn't you? And everyone else please quiet down, you're making him nervous. Now come on John, just do your best."

   He slumped back further in his seat. Yes, this was the end. An end far more gruesome than he could have ever imagined, PUBLIC SPEAKING.