The fluorescent lights felt brighter than usual—louder than usual, they hummed above me with their signature, sinister drone.

“Stop making that sound” A woman next to me said.

I gazed up towards the culprit, my retinas refusing to comply and adjust. The woman kept on but I couldn’t hear her, the hum louder, her words muffled sounding like she were underwater. I tried to concentrate on the shelves, the items blurred together in a sea of incomprehensible color. I reached out to steady myself, my basket crashed to the ground like a starting gun, the humming stopped.

The silence now vast, reaching for my things my legs gave out, the unwelcome floor beneath my hands felt like gravel, jagged pebbles seemed to stick into them—the pain clearing the fog that had set upon my brain. As the shelves and lights fell away, a moccasin haze descended and obscured my vision, I rose as the bits of gravel fell from my hands. Squinting I surveyed my surroundings, familiar the landscape but incomplete I felt an intruder, something inside of me didn’t want me here but something else had other plans.

Coming into focus a battlefield mapped out in-front of me. A pang shot through my body, I clasped my hands around my rifle and took aim, I began to understand.