By Garrison Frost

You wake with the undeniable feeling that something is wrong.

Your first thought is that maybe you are in the middle of a mild earthquake – one that is tearing down hospitals, skyscrapers and schools a hundred miles away but is just barely perceptible in the swing of a hanging fern in the kitchen of your apartment. So, you lay in bed completely still, eyes closed, trying to determine if the mattress is moving. Yes, the room is rocking, you decide. Then, you're not so sure. Then, yes, of course, you definitely feel it now. In fact, it might be growing. Ultimately, you decide that it's just your imagination. The earthquake, that is, not your feeling that something is wrong. That's definitely not a mistake.

You sniff the air. You don't smell smoke, nor do you hear any fire alarms in your apartment. Did you change the batteries? You don't smell gas, but that doesn't rule out carbon monoxide. But where would that come from – you're on the third floor, after all. You stretch your nose. No food, body odor, excrement or rotting flesh. Cautiously, you put out a hand across the sheet, confirming that you are indeed alone in the bed – no assassins, decapitated one-night stands or scorpions.

Perhaps you're sick. With all this concern about the bed moving or the building burning down, you have yet to take stock of yourself. You go down the list: no headache, ear blockage, wheeze, nausea, runny nose, speck in the eye, dead arm or kink in your neck. Except for the persistent feeling that something is seriously wrong, everything is fine. Perhaps the odd feeling is a harbinger, an asymptomatic clue to AIDS, heart disease diabetes, Lou Gehrig's Disease, osteoporosis, liver disease, cancer, glaucoma, hepatitis, cholera, tuberculosis or multiple sclerosis. Still, you feel fine, and you must set aside the possibility that your health is at issue.

So what is it then? Have you overslept? According to the clock you have plenty of time to get to work. But what if the power has gone off overnight, or the clock is simply broken? Maybe it's noon. You check the clock with your watch and everything seems fine. In another minute or so you decide to get out of bed, and gingerly put your foot on the floor, which you find to be dry, eliminating the possibility that a pipe has broken and flooded the entire apartment. You look under the bed – nothing.

In the bathroom, you stare in the mirror longer than usual. Your face looks normal: the slightly bulbous nose, the short brown hair parted on the side, the somewhat bushy eyebrows, the scare from the cut another player gave you during a high school basketball game. Nonetheless, you are compelled to search for change. Is that a skin cancer? Are you losing your hair? Have your eyes always been weird brown color? Have the whites always been this bloodshot? Does your skin look a little yellow, or perhaps green? In the end, you can't really tell.

You dress and walk to the front room, where you take a tentative look out the window. Not sure exactly what you're looking for out there, just something different, something to validate the weird feeling getting stronger and stronger as you get your morning blood going. But everything looks fine outside. The sky is still blue, the streets aren't wet, nothing seems to be on fire and nobody is out there doing anything people don't normally do. You remember a movie in which a character opens her blinds and discovers a creepy stranger in an overcoat staring hauntingly up at her window. But no unnerving trench coat guy is out here. Just a neighbor warming up his car, and an old woman shuffling along with her dog.

You go into the kitchen and pour yourself some cereal. You linger over the milk. After checking the date on the carton, you pour a few drops on the cereal, then sniff the bowl. Then you sniff the carton. Then you pour a little bit into a glass and smell it again. You drink what's in the glass, swishing it around your mouth before swallowing. Finally, you pour the rest on the cereal.

Then it hits you.

Terrorism.

You turn on the television, expecting to find video of some building smoldering, of bodies being pulled from rubble. But it's just a weatherman. You turn the TV off and turn on the radio, but all that's there is traffic and the same blah-blah-blah-blah on the local public radio station. You go back to the traffic and listen for a while. You check the peephole about thirty times and then you open the front door and get the paper. Surely a nuclear weapon has been detonated, someone's been assassinated, we've been invaded or something. Or maybe we've just gone to some heretofore unheard of state of readiness. Maybe the Homeland Security Police are rounding people up. Maybe we are at level Black, maybe things are closed up, locked down, sealed, or whatever it is things are when the threat is so big that it's worse than the actual event. Maybe there is a big bomb ten feet above your apartment building right now and if you just wait for it, it will land on you and end all this speculation right now. Or now. Or ... now.

But it doesn't fall, and you slowly come to the realization that it's not the terrorists. But that's not to say that it's not something catastrophic. Perhaps it's a hurricane, algae bloom, alien invasion or giant whirlpool. But no, the news would tell you about that, and all they have right now is a special interest story about a brindle boxer that for years was stealing money from its owner, stashing it away in its dog house. Sure, that's a weird story, but you're certain it's not the case of your general unease.

The feeling itself is hard to isolate or identify. It's neither physical nor emotional. You feel a pressure in your chest, but you can't find the exact spot of the discomfort. You feel apprehensive. Although nothing obvious has changed from yesterday, you feel as though everything is different. You're out of rhythm, vulnerable. You feel like a slot car that has bounced out of its slot, but is careening down the track nonetheless. You wonder again if you're having a heart attack.

As you drive to work, you ask yourself if perhaps you aren't having some kind of supernatural experience. Are ghosts trying to contact you? Is this some kind of foreboding? You try to remember what you dreamed about last night, thinking that if it was a plane crash or the president being murdered that you should probably call someone. But you can't remember anything. What if you have acquired some strange power overnight that allows you to control things with your mind? You try to make a light pole fall on a pedestrian carrying a grocery bag. Nothing happens.

You drive on and begin listening to your car for sounds of malfunction. Do your brakes feel funny? Has that clicking sound always been there? Does the steering wheel feel loose? You feel sure there's a gas leak somewhere, fluid draining from your transmission, oil exiting the cylinders, a nail in one of your tires, a timing chain ready to jump out of place, a fuel injector about to stop injecting. The more you listen and focus your attention, the more convinced you are that the car is ready to break down, if not explode. You think about pulling over. But when the care neither stalls nor explodes, you conclude that this is all just your imagination and that nothing is wrong with the car.

The receptionist at work greets you by name as you walk into the office. She always does, but you wonder if perhaps today it sounds colder, ironic. On your desk is the same array of papers, office supplies and equipment that you remember from the day before. You spend five minutes staring at the miscellany – the phone, the computer, the three-level organizer, paper clips, staple remover, wall calendar, Post-its, aspirin bottle – wondering if anything has been moved or handled during the night. Is anything missing? Is anything new? You can't really tell.

The phone rings and you stare at it. Is this The Call? All sorts of scenarios rush into your mind, and in the brief moment between the first and second ring you consider everything from the health of your parents to how many times you have had unprotected sex to your relative value in an era of corporate downsizing. You pick it up and it's nothing, just a guy from another department asking for a document.

Stop worrying, you tell yourself. This is stupid. You're getting yourself worked up over nothing. You wonder if you're suffering from paranoia or schizophrenia or one of the other –oias or –isms. For the rest of the morning, the strange feeling persists, but you do your best to ignore it and act as though nothing is out of the ordinary.

You go for a walk at lunch instead of getting something to eat. The air outside is clean and just a few clouds dot the otherwise blue sky. You remember that many of the sun's rays will kill you and that several poisonous gases used by terrorists have no smell. The street is full of people, the type of people one sees on the sidewalk during lunch hour – messengers, women in smart suits, men with their neckties tucked into their shirt pockets – all rushing up and down, in and out. You are reminded of one of those games where you're asked to spot what's not right about a picture and you're so intent on finding something small that you don't notice the rhinoceros in the tutu.

When you return to the office, there is a voicemail from your girlfriend. She wants to go to dinner. The request makes you nervous. You call her right back.

"Is something ... wrong?" you ask.

"No. I just want to know if you're free to go to dinner tonight."

"I know," you say. "But is there something I should know?" Your mind races through the possibilities – she's met someone else, has a disease, is a man.

She is already at the restaurant when you arrive, quietly waiting at a window seat. During the first few minutes, you can't keep your eyes off the activity outside. Was that the same car that drove by a few minutes ago? How long has that guy been in that phone booth? On the way to the restaurant it had occurred to you that perhaps you have mistakenly identified the thought that something strange was going on when in fact the funny feeling was that you are being followed.

Adding to your apprehension about the street outside is your general paranoia that your girlfriend is still waiting for some perfect moment to drop a bomb on you, which as the meal progresses looks less and less likely.

You decide to tell her. "I've had this – I don't know – does anything seem weird to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I've just had this weird feeling all day that something wasn't right."

"Are you sick?"

"No, no, no," you say. "Well, it might be that, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is, do you feel it too?"

"No," she says. "It's been a pretty normal day. I can tell something's wrong with you, though. You seem a little weird."

So there it is. You've gone from have a weird feeling to actually being weird. The rest of the dinner goes poorly. You go back to your apartment alone.

Back at your apartment, you carefully insert the key into the lock and open the door. The place is dark. Your first step inside is careful, your foot testing for wires and trap doors. Then, hastily, you turn on every light in the apartment, peeking into every room and closet to make sure you're the only one there. Has someone been here while you were gone? You can't tell. Nothing seems out of place, but then nothing would seem out of place if someone had searched carefully.

You turn on the television, but there's nothing significant on the news. After a few minutes to go to the other channels, hoping for some distraction. But you're unsatisfied and decide to go to bed. Once you're between the sheets, you lay awake for hours, wondering if you hear noises, if someone is in the kitchen, if your girlfriend actually went back to her place alone, if you're being fired, if terrorists are planning to blow up something, if you have a headache or if you just think you have a headache.

Eventually, you fall asleep and have strange dreams that you will not remember. When you wake up the next morning, everything seems normal.

(Sept. 7, 2004)

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